


The Tale of the Interpreter

by Guede



Series: The Book of the Green Field [9]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Gen, Grief/Mourning, José Mourinho Was Responsible for the Age of Sail, M/M, Off-screen Character Death, Superspy Inzaghi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-16 07:28:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4616589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nine years later, José Mourinho has been to India and back, and is now looking for a new challenge.  Or rather, a new challenge is looking for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tale of the Interpreter

**Author's Note:**

> Set in an Alternate World Tudor England loosely based on the year 1495, i. e. I liberally raid from actual history when it works with the plot and make up stuff when it doesn’t (including noble titles). Direct sequel to _The Tale of the Ship-Captain_.

“He’s that one,” José said, and jerked his chin towards the man in the plain dark clothes. He’d spent most of his years in Italy in Venice and so wasn’t acquainted with very many Milanese notables, but that wouldn’t have helped anyway according to rumor, which had nothing kind to say about Filippo Inzaghi’s birth because likely there was nothing kind about it. The man had been a nobody before Paolo Maldini had reclaimed Milan, and to be nobody in Italy took something special. And _that_ José could discern without having to know a damn thing about current Italian politics, or frankly anything about Italy. His eyes told him the man across the street was short and lean to the point of fragility, close-lipped and rather blandly watching as Nuno Gomes’ escort tried to fit themselves into the small, muddy courtyard of the merchant’s house they’d rented. His brain told him that anybody who stared that boldly had to have some quality that made the protective fear a normal person possessed unnecessary.

Rui was still fumbling through his attempts to understand the guide the English royal court had sent, but Cristiano stopped making his horse fancy-step about long enough to look across the street. His eyes narrowed and he pulled up his lower lip, sending a silent challenge back at Inzaghi, who merely turned to resume talking with the tradesman standing on his front step. Cristiano snorted, then gracefully slid out of the saddle to land in a splash of dirty water. “Who’s he?”

“The Milanese ambassador is supposed to be renting that house,” Nuno Gomes told Cristiano. He delicately flicked at his newly-splattered cloak, then tucked it more closely about himself as the wind sent another brisk sheet of chilly rain into their faces. His eyes drifted from Rui and his brow creased as he frowned as José. “Which one’s Inzaghi? The one looking from the window?”

“No.” José looked up at the sky, frowning. It was a vast plain of gun-metal gray, a whole ocean unto itself. It made him wish he’d been able to stay aboard his ship, where he welcomed the water; even at the docks, the wetness had a point since it kept the keel from running aground and made the wood pliable—though at the cost of the rot and mold that always threatened. But that was a war of wits, of careful balancing and clever planning. On land water was at best an end to an occasional need, and more frequently plain excess. “The one at the door. I said that already.”

“I don’t understand,” Rui abruptly said, reverting to Portuguese.

Their guide, who was apparently some young favorite of Henry, did a poor job of hiding his frustration—more at Rui’s heavily-accented Latin than at his own poor Spanish, José suspected. The Englishman looked off to the side in transparent irritation, which wouldn’t earn him any favors with Rui, before clearing his throat in the hopes that that would somehow make his words more understandable. Rui hid his exasperation much better, but the hand by his left hip was slowly flexing its fingers, as if it wished it were wrapped around a sword.

“I hate this weather already.” Nuno squinted up at the sky, then sharply ducked his head as trickles of cold water ran down his neck beneath his collar. He swept his hand under his jaw and around his throat, then flicked off the excess dampness. “Never mind our neighbors—Rui can find out which of them might have spies in the scullery later. What’s taking him so long with the English lord?”

As much as José loved his country, he sometimes wondered about the sense of its ruler. Sending the Count of Porto to England to turn Henry’s eye away from those treacherous Spaniards was all well and good: Nuno was intelligent and, more importantly, one of the few nobles loyal enough to not use the opportunity to work mischief against his king. But on the other hand, neither Nuno nor any of his immediate entourage spoke a word of English, and hence why José was standing here up to his ankles in mud. “That idiot’s been trying for the past ten minutes to tell Rui you’re invited to a formal dinner in your honor, to be given by the mayor of London.”

“Ah,” Nuno said, and went over to speak with Rui. Presumably he had a good reason for not simply telling José to take over the conversation.

Presumably José had a good reason for not suggesting that as well, though as the skies continued to pour out their sorrows on the earth, he didn’t really care to think through any of the possibilities. He hated this weather, he hated land, and he desperately wanted to be back on his ship, but he also had never intended to be Nuno Gomes’ damn lackey and he wasn’t about to start willingly taking on that duty now.

“…than an ambassador.” When Cristiano saw that José hadn’t been listening, he let his eyes roll before suppressing his annoyance. His horse fidgeted behind him, confused by the careless way he was slapping about the reins in his hands. “The man you were pointing to. He doesn’t look like anybody. Maybe a footman—was he buying the week’s groceries just now?”

“He’s Inzaghi. And I didn’t point,” José said under his breath. He glanced across the street, but Inzaghi had disappeared into the house. The man at the window, his cheeks and jaw slightly fleshy from age, continued to watch, but he flinched away when he noticed José’s stare. “If he buys his own groceries, that should tell you by itself that he’s used to Italian politics.”

Cristiano snorted, then laughed under his breath and briskly ruffled his hair; the locks, made inky-black by the rain, flopped limply between his fingers. He had his hood off and while his face was scrunched in a constant expression of dislike, he didn’t seem to derive any actual discomfort from presenting his bare head to the rain. “Bring your own wine and that sort of thing? I thought you said in England they were more straightforward than that.”

“I said they like to be. But they were in a civil war not too long—well, for me. You were still a babe.” Then José turned on his heel and went up to the steps, ignoring whatever muttered comment Cristiano directed at his back. It was a fact that the man was still young, and managing to go to India and safely return after three years still wasn’t enough to let him claim he knew the world.

At the doorway, Rui and the Englishman were still arguing, though their vocabulary now had expanded to include sweepingly pointless hand gestures. Rui currently had the floor, however much good that did him, and so barely spared José a glance as he strove to explain that they required a certain standard of heating in this terrible English climate. The Englishman occasionally interjected something about how and when they could exercise their horses, but otherwise looked as if he were desperate for some excuse to escape. When José deliberately scraped a boot on the first step, the man’s head went up like a hound on the scent.

“All right, Rui,” Nuno finally said, low and tired. His cloak rustled as he emphasized his comment with a prod to Rui’s back. “All right, enough of this. It’ll hurt us more at this point if we all catch the pleurisy from the rain than if they realize we’re not limited to Latin. José, if you could—”

José pressed his lips together and reminded himself that he wouldn’t have the passes to enter any Portuguese port till Nuno gave them to him. Then he coughed to signal for the Englishman’s attention, carefully arranging the English words in his head. It’d been quite a few years since he’d been in England—before India, and since India sometimes he had difficulty remembering to think in Portuguese. “Pardon me, I am José Mourinho, the captain of the _Leya_ and I speak English. May I…” Rui and the Englishman both turned towards him “…the honorable Count thanks you for your hospitality, but right now he’s very tired from the journey and he’d like to go in and rest. He’d be happy to discuss anything with you after the evening meal.”

Rui grunted, favoring José with a dubious, uncomprehending look.

Instead of looking at him, José glanced out into the courtyard, where Cristiano was still holding the horses. And eying the house across the street, though now no one was peering from its windows. “I said he’s tired and he’ll entertain visitors after supper,” he told Rui in Portuguese.

“You should’ve asked if supper was all right.” After a look to Nuno, who now clearly needed more than his cloak to tolerate the chilly dampness, Rui shrugged. “Fine. May we go in now, or does he have more to say?”

The Englishman was staring at José, his mouth partly open. He belatedly caught himself and ducked his head, two red slashes bleeding vividly across his pale cheeks. Then he straightened, clutching at the rich fur trim of his cloak, and looked José in the eye. “Well, the mayor would’ve liked to know if his dinner will have its guest of honor, but he should understand if the Count’s tired. Southgate’s assured me that his whole staff’s at your disposal, so I won’t keep you any longer. Actually…I didn’t mean to keep you out here, but your friend…he seems to have some questions?”

He pointed at Rui, who immediately opened his mouth. José leaned against the jamb and shrugged. “He’s got some concerns about the household arrangements, and the security…we’re very unfamiliar with this country, so naturally we’re cautious. Is there a steward or a…”

“Oh. I’d think so—Gareth’s made enough off at his trading, and he did say he’d made sure there’d be people around who knew something besides English,” the Englishman said, frowning. He pushed at the door, then was twisting on his heel to call out when it began to open. 

The sound of panting breaths climbed over the rattle of the rain on the roof-tiles. White fingers lapped over the edge of the door, then went paler as they pulled that away and a servant looked anxiously out at them all. He was probably about Cristiano’s age, with a shock of wheat-colored hair topping his angular face and lips as red as a girl’s. They were still presenting themselves in a wide ‘o’ when somebody else sedately pushed him aside. “My apologies for the wait,” the second man said in slow but excellent Castilian. “I am Jonathan Woodgate, the steward for Gareth Southgate. I should have been at the door waiting for you, but I was busy laying the mattresses in your rooms. We discovered this morning that the straw for them wasn’t—”

Rui interrupted then, wanting to know exactly what had been wrong with the bedding, and José for once was happy to cede him the initiative. Then he let Nuno slip ahead of him as well, and as the rest of Nuno’s servants seized the chance to hurry indoors where it was dry and, judging by the way they quickly shed their cloaks, warmer. He waited a few moments as a courtesy, but nobody came back out to order him inside, so he turned towards the horses. If the steward of the house knew Castilian, then Rui and Nuno would be able to get about well enough, and once they were at court their Latin should be able to carry them along.

“Your English is astoundingly good,” somebody called to José’s back.

José lifted his foot, then held in a sigh as he turned around and looked at the Englishman again. “Thank you.”

“Much better than my Spanish, it looks like. Though I know, it’s not the same as Portuguese, but we don’t see a lot of your people here.” The man glanced inside again, then lightly descended the steps and strode across the courtyard till he was within comfortable speaking distance of José. His cloak slipped and in an instant his dark hair was slicked back in pointed clumps against his head. “I did think my Spanish had gotten better…”

“It’s not just your Spanish. It’s the kind of Spanish you know.” After a moment, the other man was still looking expectantly at José, so José reluctantly went on with the explanation. “You’re speaking Aragonese. The kind of Spanish we know in Portugal is Castilian. Because Castile is closer.”

The Englishman absorbed that with knitted brows. “Oh. I see.”

He seemed neither offended or particularly curious, so José began to withdraw again. Then the man looked up, but a raised voice from within the house recalled him to his duties and he went back to the doorway. José took the chance to cross the rest of the way to the horses. He retrieved his reins from Cristiano, then swung himself into the saddle. One of his old injuries twinged, then settled into a dull ache that was likely due more to the cold wetness than any actual strain. He waited a few seconds for it to die away.

“So, is the Milanese ambassador important?” Cristiano asked. He mounted his horse with liquid grace, then casually turned it so he could peer inside the still-open door. When José used the slack of his reins lightly smack the man on the back of the hand, Cristiano nearly provoked his horse into rearing before settling back, sullen-faced. “Ow. Look, it’s not my fault they don’t know any English. Don’t be cranky with me.”

“I’m not cranky with you because Nuno neglected to hire his own damn translator. I’m cranky because you’re acting like an idiot when I took you along so you could learn something useful. Stop gawking like you’re at a fair. They’re watching you as much as you’re watching them.” José pulled back on the reins, trying to get his horse to retreat a few feet so he could squeeze by Cristiano to the gate, but the beast seemed to have been numbed by the long wait and refused to respond. So he slapped its flanks with the reins and finally it began to move, but only sluggishly. “And of course the Milanese ambassador is important. Milan’s the only reason the French haven’t invaded Italy yet.”

Cristiano ignored José again and kept his horse where it was, still staring inside the house. His mouth was slightly parted and as José watched, his tongue flicked out and over his lower lip. “They’re all so _bloodless._. I’ve never seen people so pale.”

“They might have white skins, but their blood’s such that they’d run you through and then ask what you meant. I’d suggest you remember that before you go and do anything stupid. That and the fact that you wanted to come to England, so I’ll feel no guilt about leaving you if I think it’ll be better for the crew,” José said. He was aware that he was sounding merely petty now, but he was more concerned with getting back to the docks while he still could.

“You’re shorthanded, like always. You can’t leave me. If you left me, then who’s going to go between you and the crew? Nuno Valente stayed in Portugal and—” Then Cristiano’s eyes widened and he rocked back in his saddle, his hand rising in belated negation before slapping back down on the pommel. He ducked his head and let his shoulders slump, but risked his glance at José a little too early. At least his expression said he realized that, too. “Never mind, let’s just—”

“Wait! Wait!” That damn Englishman came running back out of the house, quite clearly gesturing at José and Cristiano. In his haste he stumbled heavily, and when he regained his footing, he rose with cloak and boots thickly smeared with mud. But he didn’t give that any notice, and so José grudgingly made to get out of the saddle, only to have his leg trapped against the side of the horse as the Englishman slid and caught himself with a hand to José’s knee. “Wait. Are you not staying? I thought you were…part of the Count’s…”

Cristiano turned his head away, muffling a snort. He hadn’t bothered to show any deference to any of the English since they’d made port, and for the sake of preserving relations so no offended nobleman would bar their exit-- _when_ they did leave—José would have to talk to him about that. Not a task José was particularly relishing, for all his desire to tear out his frustrations on _someone_ ; Cristiano was every bit as smart and quick as he’d promised to be, but ten years after winning a place in José’s crew, he still had no damn sense.

But that was for later. At the moment José had an Englishman clinging to his knee, and he had to confess that that was odd enough to rouse his curiosity. “No, I’m just the captain who brought the Count over. I stay on my ship.”

“Well, of course, but you’re…” the man’s brows pulled together again “…never mind. I see. Are you—but are you that José Mourinho? The man who found the westward way to India?”

Cristiano stopped giggling and twisted back around to watch the man in bridling wariness. He also darted a few nervous glances to José, who ignored them for the same reasons that he had agreed to act as a translator for Nuno Gomes. “Why would it matter?”

“I’m Frank Lampard, Lord Romford,” the man said, and extended his hand. He tipped back his head to see José better and his gray eyes soaked up the world around him as much as the ground below his feet failed to soak up the rain. When José slowly gave over his hand, he smiled to display a full, impressively white set of teeth. “I’m surprised they let you out of the country. Aren’t you a trade secret?”

“Bartholomeu Dias rounded the tip of Africa, and Vasco da Gama is now trying to make that way profitable. I think they are considered the experts,” José replied after a long moment. He took a slow breath, then swallowed, and that went some way towards making the foul trail the words had left behind fade.

He pulled his hand away, then wiped it over his thigh as he tucked it back beneath his cloak, but Lampard didn’t seem to notice. On the contrary, a light had sparked in his eyes and it continued to shine strongly as he smiled again. “Well, nevertheless I’m honored to have met one of the men who made those accomplishments possible. I’m interested in the Far East myself—my family’s got a tradition of involvement with the English navy. If you’re able, and willing, I would love to be able to entertain you at my table while you’re in London.”

“I see,” José eventually said. He closely watched Lampard’s face and detected no hint of dissimulation in it, but of course that hardly meant anything. “I unfortunately cannot give you an answer now. I’ve only just arrived and am at the service of the Count.”

“I understand. But I’ll hold my offer open till you leave, on the chance that you can.” Lampard briefly described how José could get into contact with him, then released José’s knee. He took a backwards step, then pivoted on his heel and walked back into the house to dance attendance on his official concern.

The rain briefly lightened as José finally turned his horse towards the gate, but by the time he was through it and on the street, the downpour had strengthened again. He took a moment to wrap his cloak more firmly about himself, then nudged his horse aside as Cristiano clattered through the gate with his customary energy.

The other man pulled up when he saw that José was waiting for him. That seemed to confuse him, but he quickly shook it off in favor of a derisive grin and a jerk of the head towards the house. “I think he likes you. Lampard?”

“The name’s familiar. I think one of his relatives might have held some position in the Navy. Maybe part of the Lord High Admiral’s staff.” It was something José would have to look into before he went any further with Lampard’s offer.

“I’ll ask around when we get back. The common sailors will tell you anything for a drink,” Cristiano said loftily. He drummed his fingers on the saddle as they slowly squeezed their way through the crowded streets; the passersby had obviously had their curiosity aroused by Nuno Gomes’ earlier procession and were slow to move out of the way, even when Cristiano showed off the swears he’d learned from the river-pilot who’d directed them up the Thames. “So what about the Italian one? That one you say is an ambassador—I can’t believe anybody would appoint somebody with a rat-face like his to that.”

José looked at him. Cristiano defiantly arched an eyebrow, then seemed disappointed when José merely turned a shoulder to him. If the man thought that José had any interest in satisfying his bottomless appetite for dramatics, then José in turn had to wonder just where Cristiano had been for those three years in India. Or if the rough Channel crossing had knocked the immature fool into a mast and nobody had noticed. “He is an ambassador, and what about Inzaghi? I’m here to ship diplomats back and forth, no more than that. Worrying about people like him is the job of the good Count. And of Rui, when he isn’t busy trying to keep Nuno warm.”

“You used to…” But Cristiano had stopped himself long before José looked at him again. He turned his own shoulder to José, so José resumed paying attention to anything but the other man.

* * *

English merchants weren’t in fact worse than Italian ones, José finally decided. But they were very close, especially with how they professed to know nothing about ships but insisted on outrageous prices for the most basic supplies. “No.”

The man blinked once, then shook his flabby-cheeked, ruddy face and chuckled so his teeth were bared, like a wolf trying to convince a couple of chickens that it was harmless. “Oh, you’re absolutely right. It’s a different kind of pitch you need, but sadly, I can assure you that you won’t find that available anywhere in London except through me. Now, I like you. I like you a lot.”

José pinched his nose, then pulled his fingers down it. He gave the tip an extra squeeze in the hopes that it’d help stave off his growing headache. “No.”

“Of course I do,” the merchant went on. He ran a hand through his sparse ginger hair as he shuffled through his sheets of paper, then sorted out one sheet with a list of numbers written on it in a fine, spidery script. “I can get you a special rate—”

“ _No_.” A loud cracking split the air and both José and the merchant flinched, but José noted that the merchant managed to tread mud onto the edge of his fancy, over-long cape while doing so. Since José wasn’t wearing a cape, he wasn’t so hindered as he turned to see what those idiot carpenters Cristiano had rounded up were doing. He opened his mouth to call out, but then remembered something and looked over his shoulder. “What? Why are you still on my ship? I said no.”

The merchant seemed genuinely confused, as if nobody had ever said that to him. Considering the way his smile had all the sincerity of a Virgin Mary slathered in gilt and jewels, José doubted that that was the real case.

“But don’t you need this stuff?” the man said. He looked imploringly into José’s eyes, then dared to take a step forward, off the gangplank and onto the deck proper. “Look, I’m telling you—”

“And I am telling you, Stephen—”

“Steven—”

José shrugged. “However you like. I’m still telling you that I do not wish to buy your disgusting excuse for pitch, and in fact if you don’t get off my ship right now, I’ll donate what’s left of my stock to stick your cape to your ass to keep it from trailing mud everywhere.”

At that the merchant’s mouth and eyes formed three perfect circles. He looked even more like the backside of an ass that way than he had before, which in turn made José enjoy looking at him even less. And as José was not in the habit of looking at things that didn’t appeal to him, he turned on his heel and went below into his cabin.

He’d intended to make some notes on the soundings and possible sandbars in the _Leya_ ’s immediate vicinity, but when he went to light the lamp over his map-table, he found that it didn’t have enough oil. Or rather, he reminded himself of that fact, as he’d known that when he’d finally gone to bed the previous night. But he hadn’t had time to refill it since they’d docked, and no one else was allowed into the cabin unless he was there to let them in.

By the time José had filled up the lantern, lighted it, and gotten about to marking up his maps, he was in an even fouler mood as he’d found out they were lower on lamp-oil than he’d thought. That was yet another item on a rapidly lengthening list of re-provisioning needs, thanks to Portugal’s current bad relations with the Catholic kings, which had forced them wide of the Spanish coast and prevented restocking before landing in England. He’d have to dun Nuno Gomes for a more sizable stipend, and then only after he’d located a few merchants with more sense than that one with whom he’d just dealt.

Someone knocked at the door. José paused, his pencil balanced on the back of his thumb, and then bent down to carefully note a spot where he’d watched local boatmen slow down despite there being no visible danger. Then he pushed that map aside and reached for the one beneath, but the knock came again, and this time it was accompanied by a kick that rattled the hinges. So José dropped the maps and went over to open the door.

“McClaren was stupid, but did you have to walk off like that? I can’t talk to him in his language, I don’t know what he was saying, and it took me forever to get him off the ship,” Cristiano said. He shoved a hand through the doorway to hook around the jamb, ensuring that should José not feel up to dealing with him, his hand would be broken. “And look, I’ve found out he’s respected around here, God knows why, so now that he’s been insulted this is going to make it harder to find somebody else to sell us what we need.”

“It’s amusing that you speak about how much harder it’ll be, since you didn’t play any part in finding him in the first place.” José took a step back, then pivoted and returned to the table. He picked up the topmost map, held it for a moment, and then reluctantly shuffled it together with the other maps.

Cristiano tossed his head, as if he were trying to bludgeon some gnat annoying him, and came further into the room without asking. His eyes dropped to the map and his expression briefly sobered, but by the time his gaze had risen to José’s face, his irritation had restored itself. “Look, I’m _trying_ to get us out of here. But I could do that better if you didn’t publicly humiliate every damn Englishman you meet. We all know you don’t want to be here, all right?”

“And I think we all know by now that you’d like a little more time to see what these pale men are like,” José muttered. It was small of him, but being large with Cristiano generally only resulted in Cristiano offended that he’d merely gotten his due when of course he really deserved much more.

The other man didn’t reply. The deadened sounds of snapping cables and men’s shouts filtering down from above their heads kept it from being silent, but at the same time it seemed wary of the space in the center, keeping close to the walls. It reminded José, incidentally, that his men would be wanting shore-leave within today or the next day, or else there’d be a mutiny on top of everything else. Another thing Cristiano had failed to mention that he should have.

“You’ve had almost—” But the heat of Cristiano’s tone vanished almost immediately, unable to stand up to the chill that pervaded every inch of the ship. When José looked up, Cristiano had his face turned into his hand, and behind it his jaw was working as if he were struggling to recollect something.

Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to have returned by the time Cristiano finally raised his head and tiredly looked back. José raised his eyebrows and began to curl up the edge of the maps, rolling them tight so they’d fit into the crammed locker.

“I’m _trying_ ,” Cristiano finally said. His mouth lingered open a little longer, but whatever else he had to say, he wisely abandoned. He half-turned, then threw up his hands in temporary surrender and started back towards the door. “They won’t let us go back to India, so we can’t do it the easy way.”

Some creaking, raspy sound came from José’s throat. It surprised him, and so for a moment he simply let the sound stand. Then he looked down at the parchment in his hands, watching the sheets crease as he tightened his grip on them. He closed his eyes, but opened them almost immediately afterward and decided he would laugh at Cristiano’s comment. “You would think that going back to India to get decent proofing of the hull is the easy way.”

“Well, at least there we didn’t have to…” Cristiano spun about, briefly met José’s amusement with confusion and then did that with a reluctant smile “…fine, we hate the English.” His stance slightly eased. “I did find out about Lampard. His father and his uncle both held positions in the Royal Navy—his uncle’s now got a post in Portsmouth, and from what they say, more or less runs the harbor. He’s popular at court. Could’ve had a few rich tax posts by now, but word is he’s holding out in case England goes to war with France again. He wants a military command, but he’s a little young.”

“We don’t hate the English. We married the damn English, and that’s why our king’s got his throne,” José absently corrected, turning over Cristiano’s words in his head. One end of the maps was twisting so the width of the roll was uneven, so he stopped and adjusted his hands. Then he finished rolling the maps up and went over to wedge them into the locker. “That’s why Nuno Gomes still thinks he has a chance to talk Henry into marrying off his son to somebody who hasn’t been whelped by the Aragonese king.”

A loud thud made Cristiano look up, but no flurry of raised voices followed so he seemed to decide that it wasn’t important. He came forward a few steps and leaned against the table. “You think the marriage is going through?”

José had been about to shut the locker, but now he stopped with his hand still inside. Then he slowly flattened his palm against the side, letting the coarse grain of the wood scratch at him. His calluses were so thick that he wasn’t in any danger of being hurt, but that hardly meant he didn’t feel anything. “I don’t think. I sail ships.”

“You know, I don’t know why you keep trying to act like this doesn’t interest you. If it didn’t, then why are you going along with Nuno?” Cristiano snapped.

“Because I have to. I’m not going to exile myself to Italy again and if I want to stay in Portugal, I have to listen to him. It’s called diplomacy, Cristiano.” After yanking out his hand, José roughly grabbed at the locker door. He pushed it halfway shut before remembering himself, and then he willed enough control back into his hand to see that he didn’t catch any of the maps between the door and the frame as he shut the locker. “Once the carpenters are done, figure out shifts for going ashore. This isn’t India but it’s also not Lisbon or Porto, so make sure we’ve always got enough for a skeleton crew aboard.”

Cristiano exhaled sharply as he jerked himself away from the table and back onto his trailing foot. His fists punched downwards and his shoulders threw themselves back so his angry, uncomprehending expression jutted forward, like a particularly grotesque figurehead. “I know how to—”

“Then do it,” José said. He lifted his chin and stared at Cristiano.

For a long few minutes, the only sign of movement from Cristiano was the flaring and shrinking of his nostrils with every slow, furious breath. Then his shoulders sank, but not because he’d been wise enough to realize he’d been cowed. He curtly nodded and walked out without another word.

Or, for that matter, getting an answer to the question he’d brought in the first place. But that didn’t produce any objections from José. It was already clear to him not only what would be necessary to get the _Leya_ back into shape, but also that he’d have a hard time getting Cristiano to see the reasoning behind it. So frankly, he’d rather not bother and simply have it done, and then he could meet the other man’s complaints with at least one worry banished from his mind.

José reached for the box fastened to the side of the table, where the inkwell and his good quills were locked away from the ship’s roiling, but paused with his hand hovering in the air. He looked again at the locker, sucking in his lips against his teeth. Then he grimaced and gave himself a hard shake, and set about composing his message to Lampard. As Cristiano had said, there was no point in dwelling on India: they were no longer there and weren’t likely to go back, so that map could stay rolled up and gather dust for all the good it did José now. It wouldn’t even help him to tell Lampard about it, since if there was a map and Lampard could somehow get at it, then the man had no practical reason to concern himself with José, and José would only have invited more trouble into his world.

It was going to be a very strained dinner with this strange Englishman, José thought, and no doubt the conversations he’d have to have with Nuno Gomes and Rui Costa beforehand wouldn’t be any more friendly. But José was going to have his ship made whole, if nothing else. And if he had to suffer for that, then so be it.

* * *

“That is a terrible idea. Lampard? I can’t understand his damn Aragonese, but I already don’t think much of him,” Rui said, stalking about the room. He would stop before a window and tug hard at the drapes so they nearly tore off their rods, then move onto the next and repeat the motion. Occasionally he varied up the routine by wetting a finger and holding it up to a cracked stone in the wall, apparently checking for drafts. “He gets offended too easily. All I asked was if the king intended to see us any time soon and he…”

Nuno’s expression alternated between frustrated and merely exasperated, depending on whether Rui was turned towards him or not. He sprawled in one of the chairs, one hand absently flicking at the loose laces of his under-shirt. “You’re really having that much trouble just getting supplies? Why do you need them now? I’m sure that I can get them as gifts, but I haven’t had time to meet with anyone yet.”

“Seeing as we’ve been here an entire two days. And we were early to begin with, so we beat the messenger who should’ve informed the king so he’d have been here to meet us instead of in the countryside.” The look Rui gave José made it clear how much he appreciated the fine sailing José had done, and in the middle of several raging storms with only a hostile coastline as a possible refuge. Then the other man went back to shaking the dust out of the curtains, as if there weren’t servants creeping about the place looking for something to do.

One of them knocked at the door now, then called through it to clumsily ask in Castilian if the Count would be taking his dinner in his room again. José slumped further in his chair, briefly troubling to think about the reputation for the ridiculous that his country’s ambassador must be already earning. Then he reminded himself that that wasn’t any of his concern, and so he needn’t waste the effort. It was hardly as if he’d earn anything back that way.

“Rui. I’d rather have been here early than spend any more time at sea.” A nauseated look flicked over Nuno’s face; he’d deteriorated as a sailor compared to before, and had spent the entire journey pandering to his feeble stomach. Then Nuno straightened up and replied to the servant that no, they’d be coming down to dinner, and resettled himself just in time to present a bemused look to Rui’s aghast expression. “This Southgate seems to be an honest enough man, judging by the kind of household he keeps, and we did pay them in advance. I don’t really think we need to be that cautious. Here, anyway.”

“If you say so,” Rui eventually muttered. He still held to his dubious air as he retreated to the other room, probably to check the bed for any poisoned needles that might’ve somehow been put in there in the few hours since he and Nuno had left it.

Nuno watched the other man go with a face that bordered on painfully revealing, so José instead spent those few moments idly gazing upon the tapestry that adorned the opposite wall. It depicted a scene from very early in a hunt’s progression, when the hounds had just caught the scent. They snarled and raised their heads in silent howls in the foreground, while in the upper right-hand corner just a haunch, part of the back and a pair of large frightened eyes showed of the deer. The eyes didn’t look towards the dogs and huntsmen, but instead were directed straight outwards, as if pleading with anyone watching to help it.

“José,” Nuno said, and José became aware that he’d missed the other man’s comment. Nuno waited, not betraying any hints of irritation now. “Why the concern with getting the _Leya_ repaired? I know it’s your duty to care about that, but we’re here for at least six months.”

Tapestries usually came in sets, so José had to wonder where the next scene in the series was. The wife’s bedroom, perhaps? A doe going down under the hounds amid vivid slashes of Italian-dyed scarlet thread—it would fit, if this Southgate cared to emulate certain noblemen. “It’s possible to sail during the winter.”

Nuno looked silently at him. After a moment, the other man slowly pulled himself forward, resting his forearms on his knees. His open collar slipped to show a tip of a collarbone that was more jutting than gracefully winging, and against the white silk of his shirt, his skin appeared ashen. “But I don’t intend to sail that soon.”

“I see,” José said, and continued to gaze back at the deer. It wouldn’t get any aid from him, even if he were that foolish. It would do better to resign itself and learn that lesson, learn not to expect anything from anyone else.

As ill-looking as Nuno Gomes was, he hadn’t yet forgotten where he stood in the world. His eyes were as large and dark and melancholy as ever, but the way his hands tightened about each other drew José’s eye, even though it was barely a flicker of movement. “I know you don’t want to be here. You’ve made that clear enough. But you are here and you’re serving your country—which you’ve said many times you’d break your back to do—and so I don’t understand why you continue to waste the effort. I’ve always thought you were more intelligent than that.”

Long fine fingers, and even now the nails on them were perfect white-and-pink crescents, as delicate as jewels adorning a lady’s hair. José looked from them to his own hands, worn and browned with their calluses so thick that the shape of his fingers was distorted by that alone, and then took his hands from his lap to rest them on the arms of the chair. He pressed his fingertips into the deeply-carved curlicues that decorated those. “I thought you’d be intelligent enough to realize you’re being sent here to fail.”

Nuno’s brows leaped up nearly to his hairline. A moment later they lowered a fraction, but then they remained where they were. The skin along the man’s jaw tightened. “Why do you say that?”

Because José was twenty-something years older, because José was no noble but had had to find ways to bend nobles to his will his whole life in order to get anywhere, because sometimes he hadn’t found a way and so he’d been made to bend instead. Because he damn well was as intelligent as Nuno deemed to think he was, and then more besides. “You don’t speak English. You don’t know a thing about England. You had to talk them into letting you take me along, and I haven’t been here in over ten years. And they never would’ve let me go if they thought for a second that Dias was just being a braggart when he claimed I followed his lead everywhere and didn’t know how to get back to India on my own.”

“Or they thought since they were sending me, they might as well send you too and take two birds with one stone. I’ve backed you from when you went there to when you came back, and it’s not made the court like you or me any better,” Nuno said after a long second. His brows rose again, then fell back to their usual position as he slumped in his chair, staring off to the side. His right hand made a weak flicking gesture, knowing it needed to put up some resistance for pride’s sake, at least, but also knowing it couldn’t succeed if it put all its effort into it. “I do know. Henry’s going to marry off his son to the Spanish princess and we’ll lose England to the Catholic kings, and never mind that our king and he are kin.”

An odd flash of irritation made José shift about in the chair, his eyes flicking back towards the tapestry. It was better in that case, since Nuno at least wasn’t blind, but not in any meaningful way—and so it wasn’t any different than before, so José’s contempt should have remained unchanged. “So? You know.”

“So is that why you’re so eager to have the _Leya_ ready to leave?” Nuno’s voice abruptly caught on the last word and José looked up, but the other man was merely fighting off a sneeze. He lowered his head and gingerly pressed a hand to the side of his nose, waited a few moments, and then dropped his hand. “I can’t believe that you intend to go straight back and be disgraced alongside me.”

“I could believe that _you_ would go back for that,” José said. He chose his words too hastily, before he quite understood why he would bother commenting on the obvious.

Of course Nuno took offense to the comment; his head went up and the blood angrily stained his cheek as if someone had slapped him. His fingers drew themselves slowly inwards, then flexed straight again. “You would now, but you—damn it, I know India took a good deal from you, but I never thought it’d crush you. You, of all people.”

José actually required a long breath before he could answer with equanimity. “Don’t insult me. You’re the one who’s in line for the king’s disfavor.”

“And you’re the one with the ship. Which needs repairs,” Nuno snapped. Then he blinked, looking thoughtful. He slowly settled back in his chair, idly pulling his shirt more closely around him. The thin silk was never going to do much about the chill, so he finally had a sensible thought and pulled on the doublet that had been hanging off the back of his chair. “I did ask for you. They didn’t foist you on me. And I asked not because you’ve got the strongest instinct to survive of any man I’ve ever met, but because you’ve got that and you use it to _think_.”

“That’s very complimentary of you.” After another moment, José began to get up. He glanced towards the door to the other room as he did and glimpsed a dark sloping line running from shoulder to hip. Then Rui turned around and walked away without showing his face. “So what, you want me to save you again? This isn’t pirates in the Mediterranean.”

“And my fingers aren’t broken.” A little steel finally made it into Nuno’s voice. He remained seated, but the intensity of his stare made it clear he wasn’t finished with the conversation yet. “I’m still your best chance of ever being able to show your face in Portugal again, whatever the state of my rank and estates happens to be. I’m the only one who believes you discovered India and not Dias.”

That wasn’t quite true, but José stopped himself from pointing out that contradiction and instead looked back at the deer in the tapestry. He’d learned his lessons. “I’m a captain of ships, my lord. And currently my ship is—”

“And the Englishman can help with that? Fine, go see him,” Nuno sighed. He glanced towards the other room, rubbing at his neck, and then pulled himself out of his chair as if he were carrying a load of lead on his back. Then he began tidying his clothes, but as José turned to go, Nuno’s eyes flicked sharply upwards, fixing him in place. “But even if you know England, you don’t know nobles. Lampard’s not entirely trusted at court—his family profited from the warring here, and he promises to be too good himself at fighting to make King Henry comfortable.”

It was a good point, even if José resented having it delivered in yet another faintly contemptuous lecture. For all that Nuno respected him, if the man genuinely meant those claims, he still was the Count of Porto and he still never would forget it, no matter if it did him good or not in a given situation. “He’s learned Aragonese.”

“He’s got a flimsy—very flimsy—” Nuno’s voice faded as he stooped to take his overrobe off another chair, then strengthened as he turned back around “—very distant tie to John of Gaunt. Like King Henry. But Henry didn’t follow in his forefather’s footsteps in seeking help from Spain, of course. Till now.”

No, he’d gone to France, and for a long time that had worked to Portugal’s advantage since France had kept the Catholic kings busy when the Reconquista hadn’t. Possibly Ferdinand and Isabella still doubted that Henry would turn his back on the French, and so they would appreciate another Englishman…José grimaced, then briskly shook out his cloak before he swung it over his shoulders. He didn’t care about politics any more than it cared about him, he reminded himself. And currently it cared about him very little. “That should make for entertaining dinner conversation. Maybe he’ll be so busy telling me about how he’d like to mutiny against his king that he’ll talk himself into being useful for us.”

“You think so?” Nuno asked, lifting his head.

He looked overly hopeful, José decided. The man really was aware of his precarious position, and beyond that, he was aware of his limited ability to rectify that. At least according to the precious unwritten rules of conduct his kind followed, and so he was depending on José to come up with some filthy peasant solution. 

Curiously enough, that conclusion made José feel more bitter than outraged or offended, and not entirely because he already had too many worries to bother treating that one as anything special. He almost wanted to tell Nuno that no, he didn’t think so, and no, he didn’t think he was going to even get a few damned barrels of pitch out of Lampard. But of course he said something else. “He’s a hungry noble, he’ll want to talk about himself. I want to try and see him sometime this week, before the king arrives in town. Since I guess that you need me to keep translating?”

Nuno wavered, his hands stilled on the fastenings of his doublet. Then he shrugged and continued making himself presentable for dinner, showing just how much he’d meant that flash of regret. “I’m not about to borrow some merchant’s footman, and then have to translate myself into Spanish before he can even do any work. Rui will call on you when you’re needed.”

“You know where to find me, my lord,” José said curtly, and then he walked out.

* * *

Once outside on the street, José briefly contemplated returning to the docks, but that brought with it the possibility that Lampard’s reply would have arrived and he’d have to look at it. Then he’d have to begin preparing, and it was clear by now that he’d have to do that himself if he wanted to have any chance of even partial success: Nuno’s melancholy meant that man was clearly going to leave the whole business up to José, and Cristiano was—well, as he’d said, he was trying. But sometimes he didn’t know what to try, and then he would make mistakes like thinking all José needed to know about an English _noble_ would be what positions his father and uncle had held in the Navy.

Lampard had royal blood in him, and enough so that Henry feared the younger man would repeat his feat and take his throne, as Henry had taken that of the king who’d ruled before him. And he said he was simply interested in India. Sometimes José did wonder what was it that made people think he’d buy their lies. He’d never particularly struck himself as gullible.

A wagon heavily-loaded with refuse creaked along the road before José, completely blocking his way. He waited as he thought, but the wagon’s wheels seemed defective in some way, since they continually caught and stalled, and the gaunt, broken-backed horses pulling it seemed in no hurry to remedy the situation. Neither did the driver, who with his stained rags and hunched shoulders seemed more like the refuse in the wagon-bed than anything human.

Eventually José lost his patience, even though he still hadn’t decided what unwelcome task of the day he’d tackle next. He could at least find himself more pleasant surroundings for making up his mind on that, and so he squeezed along the high stone wall that surrounded Southgate’s house.

José finally emerged into the open street, but almost immediately had to leap aside as a man on a lathered horse careened down the street. He continued onto the slight rise on the other side of the road, then deemed himself safe enough from the street’s traffic to stop. Meanwhile the horseman had to slacken his furious pace as he ran into the wide wagon, his exhausted mount barging up against the side of it so the wagon-driver stirred, then turned to shout abuse. The horseman shouted right back, and immediately a crowd began to gather.

“What’s going on?” someone said.

The accent struck José first, and then the meaning of the words. He looked back across the street, but saw no one watching from Southgate’s house. So he turned, stepping backwards as he did to lean against the wall to his right, and looked at the Milanese ambassador. “Some argument.”

Inzaghi’s expression didn’t change as he took in José; he’d known who’d he’d been addressing. He looked even thinner than before, his body swaying slightly in the brisk wind that periodically tore down the street. The line of his mouth was a thin, short segment with its ends bent downwards. Except when he talked, and then his lips parted a good deal less than they would have seemed to need to in order to shape his words. “Ah, the new neighbor.”

“That would be the Count of Porto. I’m only the captain of the ship that brought him,” José said. He honestly, truly was getting very tired of having to force those words from his mouth. “Excuse me.”

“Is the Count taking visitors?” Inzaghi asked, failing to move. A few paces behind him, he had a pair of lackeys waiting, both of them much taller and broader in the shoulders than he was. They stood silently, their cloaks pulled slightly up to keep clear of the mud and their faces shadowed beneath their hats; he stood bareheaded and cloakless, but for all that he still was the more difficult to read.

“I have no idea. I’m not part of his personal staff.” José liked saying that only marginally more than he liked pretending the only standing he had with Nuno was what Nuno deemed to give him, as at least it allowed the intelligent—and true—reading that he wasn’t, in fact, a servant. He was a free man with his own—the sour taste in his mouth abruptly dried to a bitter crust as the wind rose, lashing across his face so sharply that he couldn’t help but suck in his breath. “You can inquire inside, if you like.”

Inzaghi’s eyes were aware enough so that he had to have heard what José said, but he didn’t betray any reaction of the words with a twitch of a brow or a shifting of weight or anything like that. He stepped back a few inches, glancing over his shoulder as the wagon finally began to creak forward again, but then stopped so he still blocked José’s way. “Is your ship the _Leya_?”

One of the pair waiting on Inzaghi was the man who’d been looking from the window, and who Nuno had thought looked more the part of the ambassador. Curiously enough, since the man was round-cheeked and had large, concerned eyes, as if he were busier fearing the low-hanging menace of the gray clouds overhead than contemplating what could be done should José turn out to be troublesome. He was probably some sort of secretary, and without any peculiarly Italian adjunct like poison-cataloging added to his duties—those probably went to the other man, who was tall and blond and clearly Northern, and who when he noticed José watching only stroked the hilt of his sword more pointedly.

“Why would it be any of your business?” José diffidently replied. A groaning behind him warned of the approach of another wagon, and so he stepped aside just in time to avoid the water that splashed up before its wheels. “I’m not in the habit of discussing my business outside of my regular clients.”

Inzaghi pursed his mouth, then raised his hand to the side of his forehead. One fingertip moved to flick a piece of hair out of his eyes, and then his hand slipped away behind the folds of his loosely-cut clothes. The quality of his clothing was good enough, with fine lace and embroidery, but the tailoring was almost absurdly simple. “I’m Filippo Inzaghi, the ambassador from Milan. I think you know.”

His English was thickly accented. For a moment José considered the possibility that the foreignness of the language was responsible for Inzaghi’s phrasing, but then he irritably dismissed that as inconsistent with what else he’d heard of the man. “I think I must refer you to the Count for any further inquiries.”

“You think that?” Inzaghi said, his eyebrows rising.

“Yes,” José said, clipped and low. Then he stepped around the other man, timing it so he could allow a red-faced, potbellied fish-hawker jolly his way between them.

He walked quickly away, angling himself to cross the street again, but he only had reached the halfway point before a cart of firewood forced him back to the side again. But that was quite a few yards away and he thought he’d made his point well enough, so he stopped to let the cart pass.

“You came in with the great storm the other night.” Inzaghi’s mouth remained the same as José started, then pivoted on his heel to stare at him, but something briefly flickered in his eyes. The other two men weren’t with him now. “I hear pieces of ships are still washing up on the coast from that.”

José pressed his lips together, refusing to look about them. He already knew he’d walked through a tight mass of loud, forceful people who would’ve protested against anyone pushing too quickly between them—in fact, they had. But at him only. “That’s interesting.”

A slight crease appeared between Inzaghi’s brows. He stood there, as expressionless as a statue. Then he shrugged a bony shoulder and turned away, looking back to where he’d come; the crowds briefly parted so his blond companion could be seen on the corner. “Your ship’s broken and you can’t get what you need to fix it. And before you accuse me of espionage against a fellow diplomat, I’d think more on the business—or lack of—that you’ve done in London so far.”

Talkative English, José sourly thought to himself. “And why is an ambassador concerning himself with the repairs of one ship in hundreds that must visit this city?”

“Because I’m interested in ships. This is a country where many men find that fascinating,” Inzaghi said. He was walking away and didn’t bother to turn when he talked, but nevertheless his voice drifted back to José as clearly as if he’d come up to whisper it in José’s ear. It had that quality, that kind of insinuation that seemed weak but that could manage its way through a rolling, rumbling mob of people and yet not lose any of its potency.

Only after Inzaghi disappeared into the crowds did José finally turn about, and when he did, his feet were firmly aimed to bring him back to his ship. The other merchants could wait till the morning, when the mundane matters of the world were at their strongest anyway. Dusk was near to falling now, and with it was José’s hope that he needn’t traffic overmuch in the seething, hungry morass that was life on land. He needed to go back to the water.

* * *

“Sounds like everyone knows we’re—” Cristiano looked up, noticed José’s expression and grimaced “—sorry, everyone _thinks_ we’re crippled.”

José instinctively ducked his head as he sat down on the edge of his bunk, studying the materials list in his hand. He absently put out his other hand, but touched only space for several seconds, and when he finally looked up, he discovered that that was because he’d gotten the end of the bed wrong in his head. So he put down his hand, shifted the paper to it, and put up his other arm to brace it against the side of the bunk. “Don’t sound so amused. It’s serious.”

“Why? None of them are Portuguese.” The other man jammed his heels against the floor before bending backwards over the top of his chair, stretching out his arms till his fingertips just grazed the wall. He held the pose for several seconds, his joints popping as his face gradually twitched into a deep, strangely satisfied grimace, and then he abruptly snapped himself forward. “Look, I know I just said something stupid, but I can’t help it. I don’t know what you’re _thinking_ when you don’t _tell_ me.”

Something vicious was on the tip of José’s tongue, but at the last moment he swallowed it. The hour was late and he wasn’t about to leave the ship for any petty reason, and no matter how annoying Cristiano was, he was good to have in a tight spot. With most of the crew ashore for the first time in two months, that was something José had to consider.

“It’s even worse that none of them are Portuguese,” José said instead. He read and reread his list, though of course that wasn’t going to make it any shorter. “At least in Portugal I know who’d be interested because they want to make trouble, even if I don’t know what trouble they want to make. I don’t know why this Englishman’s bothered to find out who I am and what I’ve done, and I don’t know why the damn Milanese ambassador knows the name of my ship. It’s supposed to be Nuno they’re bothering, God damn them.”

On a ship it was never fully silent, what with the constant low groaning of water-logged wood and the whining of strained cables, but eventually one did get used enough to that to not really hear it anymore. José had long since reached that point and so he didn’t miss a nuance of the way Cristiano failed to say anything in reply.

But he didn’t need to look at the other man for that, so he didn’t. Instead he stared at the list in his hand, which mocked him with its careful script and detailed notes on the exact quantity, quality, and reasonable market price for each item. But interestingly, the more he looked at them, the more the writing seemed to blur and smear, and eventually it became so difficult to read that he simply pressed his fingers together.

The paper folded haphazardly, crackling loudly in the absence of words. One of its stiff corners caught José in the fleshy part of the palm and he jerked his hand, then half-swallowed a curse as the sheet slipped out of my fingers. He bent for it, but someone else’s fingers had already closed around it.

Cristiano sat down at the other end of the bunk as if he were sitting down with a tiger and wasn’t quite sure whether it was hungry or in a tolerant mood. He glanced up at José, then looked with creased forehead at the paper as he smoothed it out on his knee. “So what are you saying? You think the Italians and the English are going to fight it out over you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” José said.

“I wasn’t.” There was bite to Cristiano’s tone, and also to the look in his eyes when he flung up his head. He stared at José, his lower lip working between his teeth. Then he sighed and slumped against the wall, drawing up his leg so he could brace his boot against the bunk’s edge and rest his chin on his knee. “Actually, I was trying to flatter you. You know. Like you used to tell me you wouldn’t listen to a word of it because you knew it didn’t mean anything, but you did like hearing it anyway. You did.”

José didn’t quite understand that, though he did know exactly what Cristiano was remembering. He reached across, but Cristiano was already handing the sheet back, which gave José pause again. After another moment, he took it and reached up to stuff it in the slats above the bunk, where he could find it in the morning. “I don’t like politics. I never have.” He reached up and loosened his collar, then yanked that away from his throat. The skin around his eyes felt tight and aching, and when he pressed his fingers into it, his fingertips sank in nearly to the bone without feeling any resistance. “All I’ve ever wanted to do was be able to do what I do, without anyone interfering. And I gave that up once—I bought our way to India with that—and I’m in no mood to do it again.”

“Nobody ever said you had to,” Cristiano said. Soft, quiet. As if he was trying to be soothing. His eyes were glittering, but the unassuming set of his shoulders looked ill on him, making his head and neck look like the pulled-in hunch of a turtle.

“Haven’t they?”

The corner of Cristiano’s mouth twitched, then bent up. Then he twisted about and leaned forward to put his hands on the bed, grinning. “Fine, well, they were all idiots, and idiots don’t count.”

He crawled further across the bed till his hands ran into the side of José’s leg. They hesitated there, then lapped up and over as Cristiano eased the rest of himself onto the bed. And bumped against the low ceiling of the bunk, which briefly skewed his smile into a scowl. But then he simply shook it off, the quiver running from his shoulders—now thrust proudly back—to his hips. Which were slim and well-shaped, and the rest of him had indeed grown into the fantastic promises that that teenager had made so many years ago, and so…and so José was a man. And tired, and cold in this wet, chilly land, and too weighted with all that he still, for some reason, had to consider and remember and take into account.

Cristiano was uncomplicated. That was his attraction, more so even than his looks and his brains. When José molded his palms to the other man’s hips, splayed his fingers down Cristiano’s thighs, Cristiano didn’t bother asking if he could do anything. It probably never occurred to him to do so if someone didn’t point it out. He simply bent forward and did it, pressed his mouth against José’s and put his hands against José’s chest, the rest of him adjusting as José straightened a little, as they worked their way around the cramped space. The bend of his thigh into José’s hand, the groan that rumbled in his throat as the slip and slide of their mouths grew more forceful—it was all as natural as breathing to him, and done with as little thought. Nothing but sensation.

And for a little while, the sheer prospect of a warm, pliant body with no negotiations before or after lulled José into a similar lack of thought. But then that began to grate on him, the way he didn’t need to care about how his tongue moved in Cristiano’s mouth as long as it did, the way anything seemed to do for the other man, and eventually he couldn’t find it in him to even care to act. If it was that easy, if it was that unnecessary for him.

But Cristiano was smart, and his straightforwardness hardly meant that he was willing to take a bad bargain when he didn’t have to. He noticed and stopped, sitting back on his heels. He’d loosened their clothes to the point that that exposed them to the cold drafts, but he didn’t seem particularly bothered by that. “What?”

José opened his mouth, then shut it and pulled at his shirt, tugging it over his skin before the chill goose-pimpled him into a very large plucked fowl. He rolled his shoulder.

“Oh, for God’s sake—you know, it’s worse when you act like you’re being nice, like you’re doing me a damn _favor_ by not telling me you just don’t think I’m worth it,” Cristiano snapped. He pushed himself further back, off his feet so he was sitting on his hip with his feet hanging over the side of the bunk. “I know I’m not him. I’m never going to be him. I don’t want to, and even if I did, it’d be—it’d be ridiculous.”

“It would be. Look, if you know that, then you know…you’re just warm and enthusiastic. That’s all you are. You’re not going to get anything else in this bed,” José replied. His tone was sharp, but it could’ve been sharper. And that it was instead softened slightly by understanding wasn’t due to any conscious intention on his part; he was replying too quickly for that.

Cristiano stiffened. The injury José’s words had inflicted on him shone fiercely from his eyes, but only for a moment. Then he’d jerked himself around, his head set high and angry, and began pulling his clothes together. But his hands almost immediately dropped to his lap. His shoulders heaved in a sigh and the taut set to his mouth eased as he stared out into the room.

“I knew that when I got into it the first time.” The shoulder closest to José lifted and dropped. Then Cristiano breathed in deeply and ducked his head, pulling at his hair. “I never thought I was going to stay with you my whole life anyway. I have my own things to do. Later.”

He spoke boldly enough, but the look he darted José still bore plenty of evidence of how young he was. Even so, he’d stood up for himself, and in such a way that José had to give the man an amused quirk of the mouth.

“But I still want to be here now. At least, I did. I thought I could learn a lot from you.” Cristiano slowly straightened and turned to gaze fully at José. “I thought you liked to fight.”

José felt the muscles in his face and neck jerk tight, as if someone had turned a key to wrench at all of them at once. He swallowed once, and then again, and then he thought he could reply in a reasonable tone. “Then you had it wrong. I like to _win_. But sometimes you have to lose, to get out of a bigger loss.”

“Fine, but why aren’t you trying to win afterward?” Cristiano asked.

Eventually it was going to happen. It always did with Cristiano, who because he was so direct always pressed too hard too quickly, and who was just fortunate this time that José was too tired to do what he wanted to do. Instead José put his foot up against Cristiano’s hip, braced his back against the wall, and shoved the other man down the bed. Then he pulled himself further onto the mattress, turning away from the thud and the snarled swear. “Cristiano, sometimes there are things you can’t win. All you can do is lose them.”

“You’re ridiculous right now, the way you’re acting,” Cristiano hissed. His hand struck at José’s hip, and then higher up at José’s side. Then, when José failed to react to either of the blows, the other man scooted up the bed and leaned over, his shadow blotting out what little light there was. “He’s _dead_ \--”

“I know!” José grabbed Cristiano’s hand when it was a hair away from his face and bent it roughly back to the bed. And he held it there even though Cristiano was gasping in pain. “I know, damn you. And you’re pathetic, not even able to step into Nuno Valente’s place, and you can’t even understand such a simple—you don’t try what didn’t work before, you fool. You don’t get caught twice.”

Cristiano stared at him, lips curled back from gritted teeth, breath hissing so its heat ebbed and flowed against José’s face. The other man looked like a wounded animal that way, but one still willing to leap at the throat, to think it had a chance if it only charged strongly enough.

Then José let go of his wrist, and Cristiano immediately snatched that back to his chest. He hunched over it, leaning away from José, but as he was still sitting on the bed that was rather pointless of him. His breathing briefly grew louder, but then died away till it was barely audible, and if it weren’t for his slight rocking, it would have been impossible to know if he were still alive.

José closed his eyes and turned onto his back. He let his arms fall where they pleased and tried not to think of anything in particular, and very gradually his body began to relax. It was too tired to pay much attention to his worries.

But it did pay attention when something touched his ankle. Then fingers curled around the joint and José lifted his head to see while sliding his hand towards the knife stowed in the join between mattress and wall.

“I’m just taking off your boots. I don’t feel like being told to wash your sheets on top of trying to figure out what else you want done,” Cristiano said. He sounded more petulant than anything else, but the way his shoulders tensed when José moved his foot proved he wasn’t being so careless.

After another moment’s nonresistance, Cristiano finished pulling off that boot. Then he did the other and twisted about to set them on the floor. He stayed bent over as he pulled off his own and the folds of his shirt drifted forward, ghostly pale in the darkness. The outline of his body beneath them was discernible as shivering shadows; he was cold, after all.

José inhaled shallowly, but exhaled deeply. Then he moved over, and pushed at the sheets so Cristiano wouldn’t make the mistake of lying on top of them. Cristiano turned while he was doing that, then stopped to watch. His face was too far in the dark for his expression to be readable, but after José was done, he immediately flopped down and maneuvered his lanky body into the tight space. He made liberal use of the sheets, but he also pressed close to José, sneaking a hand over José’s belly and then, when José stiffened, moving it up to clasp over José’s shoulder instead.

“It’s a good thing you don’t really like me, then,” Cristiano said softly, half-joking. “You don’t need to worry about getting caught that way again. But you could do a lot more than you are now. You’d like to. You know you do.”

“That would be what you think.” José closed his eyes, and this time, told himself they would stay shut no matter what the idiot crammed in beside him did.

Cristiano snorted, pushing his face against José’s shoulder. His body slackened, somehow relaxing despite the awkward twists into which it’d been forced. “Maybe I just think the damn English and the damn Italians shouldn’t get to say what we do. I’m still with you for now—you get stuck, I get stuck. So don’t get stuck.”

He slipped a hand between them, pulling at their clothes, and then nudged his knee between José’s legs. And José needed the sleep, but his fool body still wanted the impossible; he reached down to take Cristiano’s wrist, but the other man twisted away, pushed close so his bulk blocked off the rest of the room. His mouth fastened onto the underside of José’s jaw, hard and sucking, and his hand trapped their pricks together, teased them against a lean long thigh.

Then his head began to slide. The cold air rushed in, chilling the parts of José’s body that had been warming themselves against Cristiano, and José finally opened his eyes. He looked down, watched the top of Cristiano’s head, the strain of the man’s shoulders as he struggled with the cramped space. Cristiano took José’s hips into his hands as his mouth took in José’s prick, still without an ounce of deference in him. He’d push and push and push till he got what he wanted.

And good for him. He had the kind of simple wants where that was possible, where he didn’t risk disappointment upon actual receipt, and that attitude would serve him well. Wherever—wherever he ended up, José thought.

“You know, I miss him too,” Cristiano murmured, sliding like an eel back up the bunk. He looked with dark, serious eyes at José, then ducked his head to wipe the back of his hand over his mouth. “You’re not the only one who does.”

“Of course I’m not.” José looked past Cristiano, then back at him, at the flushed face, the tense jaw. He could feel the insistence in the quick breaths that puffed against his chin, and in the end, maybe Cristiano did have something of his own. Maybe he’d earned it.

Maybe José was tired, and of the silence and the cold as well as of the work. Whatever it was, it made him put down his arm and take Cristiano in hand. It at least didn’t take long, thanks to Cristiano’s youth, and then Cristiano surprised José again by offering up his shirt to clean off José’s fingers.

“So why not tell me what it is?” Cristiano asked.

Too far. José jerked his hand free, then twisted till he could see over Cristiano’s head. His own head was jammed against the top of the bunk, but he ignored the discomfort, knowing he’d grow accustomed to it soon enough. “If it’d been the other way around, you wouldn’t have missed me, Cristiano. He would have. Now be quiet and let me sleep.”

* * *

Lampard’s house was impressive, at least in its size and the way its impression of stretching its entitlement just a little too far jarred with José’s first meeting with the man. Then again, further inquiries had revealed that the family manor was actually in Essex, so it wasn’t certain that this house had as much to do with the man as to what he wanted to say to the rest of the world. Which was interesting in its own right, and that was important to remember. “They’re not the same thing.”

“Fine,” Cristiano said. He wasn’t looking at or really listening to José, but instead was trying to peer at something or someone near the stables. He even went so far as to begin to stand in his stirrups, but José grabbed his arm and pulled him down before everyone in the courtyard noticed his curiosity.

That was one mark in favor of Lampard: the bustling of his people mostly didn’t reflect the garishness of his house. There were the usual liveried servants with sour, arrogant expressions, but the ones José could see were all engaged in doing practical and necessary tasks instead of standing about scheming against each other. Horses were being led to and fro, soiled hay mucked fresh from the stable was being carted away…far down by the kitchen, which was a separate building from the main house, two boys were hunting about a flock of squawking, panicked chickens, feeling for the fattest birds. And down the steps came someone who José took to be the steward of the household, given that he wasn’t Lampard but everyone parted before him as if he were.

José took him for near his own age, but when the man was close enough to hail them, José could see he wasn’t much older than Cristiano. A year, perhaps, beneath the deep grooves that carved—not drooped; the flesh was firm—their way under each eye. And his clothes were too fine to belong to a mere household servant, though they were disheveled and somewhat worn in places. No family resemblance aside from possibly the hair: a dark smoky brown, falling naturally into spikes.

The man put out a hand before José could dismount. He smiled to show unusually white teeth: a full set. “John Terry. I’m sorry Frank’s not here too, but he’s been kept overlong at court. But he’ll be about soon enough, so hopefully you’ll not have to put up with me too long.”

“Terry?” José repeated.

Cristiano had abandoned whatever had interested him before and was now staring quite fixedly at Terry. He cleared his throat, but when Terry glanced at him, was found to be watching a bird fly over the roof.

“Sir Terry, if you have to have it that way. John’s fine with me.” John finally released José’s hand to take the reins of José’s horse, holding it still so José could dismount. “I’m one of the port officials, so you might have—”

“Fish,” Cristiano said in English, his accent thick but his tone pointed.

The look John gave him was both faintly annoyed and embarrassed. Then John turned back to José and the embarrassment strengthened. “You’ve probably heard my name that way. I collect the taxes on the London fisheries.”

It was vaguely familiar, but José didn’t have much to do with fishermen so he doubted he’d be able to recollect much more than that. Clearly Cristiano knew more in this case, so he’d have to get the other man alone before Lampard came back and they had to go to dinner. “Well, we’re very new to London, but I can already see it’s a good port. Thank you very much for meeting us.”

“You’ve never been here before? Your English is very good,” John said. His surprise came as easily as his embarrassment had, and he didn’t act at all as if he were in the habit of trying to hiding his emotions.

“I’ve been in England, but not London.” A lie, but John wouldn’t be old enough to know that, and when José had been to London, it’d been in a different ship and not as the captain of it. He doubted anyone remembered him from that, and so far he’d seen no reason to question his doubt. “I’m sorry, but can you excuse me for a moment? I need to send my servant on—I have some things for him to do…”

John looked at Cristiano again and an interesting trace of relief passed over his face. Then he turned back to José and said of course, it wasn’t a problem, he’d be back in a moment after taking José’s horse to the stables. He walked off with the beast at a brisk pace, but José still waited for him to disappear around the corner before looking up at Cristiano.

“He doesn’t like me,” Cristiano said, amused. He opened his mouth and curled his tongue so its underside bulged out of his lips, then rudely flicked it in the direction Terry had gone. But then his expression sobered. “You still want me to go off now?”

José thought over it, then decided that Cristiano wasn’t merely being difficult this time. “Why?”

“Because…” Cristiano glanced about, then bent down so he could lower his voice “…because I could’ve sworn I saw somebody from Southgate’s house here, going into the stables. That blond boy.”

“Are you sure?” José said quickly. He didn’t look about himself, but instead reviewed the past few days in the light of this new possibility. “No, of course you are. You eyed him as if—”

Cristiano made an indignant face. “Because he was staring back. He looked nervous. That’s all.”

He was a poor liar, but he did have good eyes, ones that could tell when it was still a pinprick smudge on the horizon whether a ship was rigged out with cannon and how many. “Well, go drop off that order with the blacksmith.”

“That won’t take me but a minute, and—oh. But won’t he have left by then?” Cristiano asked. He started to look towards the stables, then had the temerity to present an annoyed face when José pulled him down by the arm. “Oh, they’re not even paying attention to me. They’re all busy with you.”

“And who are you talking to right now?” José’s fingers itched to slap the other man, but he knew that that wouldn’t deliver any sense to Cristiano. So instead he flattened his hand against the shoulder of Cristiano’s horse. “He’ll still be here. Go leave that damn message and then come back, and try to be discreet about it.”

Cristiano arched his eyebrows and firmed up his jaw, doing his best to look lofty and merely reaching childishly offended. “How do you know he will?”

“Or fine, go be an idiot. But don’t be surprised when I don’t let you back on the _Leya_ ,” José muttered, abruptly turning away. He was done with the argument; he’d said all that he thought was meaningful and he couldn’t waste any more time if Cristiano couldn’t understand things for himself.

He’d only gone a few steps towards the door when he heard a loud clatter and then a host of curses from the street. José looked over his shoulder, but all he saw was the empty gate and just beyond it, a few passersby in various stages of shock and irritation, all staring at the fresh splashes of muddy water on their clothes. For a moment he considered the chance that Cristiano had gone off in a fit, but he finally decided that was unlikely, and for the same reasons that he knew that Southgate’s servant would still be hanging about the place.

“Done, then?” Terry came strolling back up the courtyard, his stride loose and confident. He carried himself more like a soldier than like one of those greedy gentry and minor nobles, who acted more like merchants in their desire to squeeze every drop from whatever fat post they managed to wheedle from their king. And yet…Henry had him collecting taxes on fisheries? The English king might be paranoid, but nothing José had heard yet suggested that the man was wasteful. “I’ve just spoken to the cook and he’s promised a first-rate meal. Frank wouldn’t want you to be standing around hungry, so if you’d like, we can go in and see if the cook’s a lying bastard or not.”

Bluff language too, and even if it had been a long time since José had been in England, something about John’s accent still rang slightly amiss to him. Not that the man was foreign—if anything, he was more English than the incessant rain—but José still didn’t think the accent…fit the rank, perhaps. “If you like.”

“Well. All right.” A little uncertainty tempered John’s forthright gaze as he attempted to read something into the nothing that José was making his face. He shifted onto his trailing foot and moved his hands to no apparent purpose, then rolled a shoulder as he pivoted on his heel towards the door. “Well, come on in then. It should be a little closer to what you’re used to in Portugal. In terms of heat, anyway. I told them to pile on the wood in the fireplaces.”

“Thank you, but I’ll be fine. On the open ocean you get no fires, so I’m used to cold,” José said.

John glanced back, the grin on his face starting brightly and then quickly turning hesitant. He held the door for José, then stopped to knock the water and mud off his boots before he went inside himself. “Right, I should have known that, I suppose. It’s certainly worse when I’m out on the boats than when I’m ashore and can drop into any tavern for a bit of warmth in a mug.”

José made some noise of acknowledgment, but wasn’t listening too closely since he could tell from John’s tone that the other man was simply trying to fill in the silent gaps. Instead he studied the interior of the house and found it much like the outside: a little pompous, lacking the sheer personality or sense of history that would make that understandable, if not justifiable. But again, also lacking a real connection to the actual man. Perhaps Lampard was married, and had had the bad judgment to let his wife do all the decorating—José had neglected to notice if the man had been wearing a ring on the correct finger or not.

He absently looked at Terry’s hand and found its fingers bare, and then it moved and José let his eyes follow it without thinking. The hand rose and slid its fingers into the dark scruff of hair, and then José dropped his eyes to catch John staring oddly at him.

“I wasn’t born into a Navy family like Frank was, but I’ve picked up a thing or two from my post,” John said. Too quickly, his words stumbling over each other, and likewise his steps as he led José down the hall were too fierce against the parquet floor. “I have to say, I’ve been on a few land campaigns, but that’s easy compared to what even the Barking fishermen have to do every day. Back-breaking work.”

“I’ll take your word for it. I’ve never done any fishing.” And if José ever fell that far, he’d retire and marry some merchant’s widow first. If he couldn’t be at sea for what he was meant to be there to do, he wouldn’t cheapen himself by settling for something so much lesser.

It was entirely possible John read as much from his tone, as José certainly wasn’t disguising his feelings. And it seemed from the way that John blushed and ducked his head that he had. This sort of small talk wasn’t really his milieu and it showed. And—more interesting—he apparently cared a great deal that it did, but not in a way that meant he blamed José for the humiliation.

They went on to the end of the hall, John rubbing at his mouth and the side of his face as he clearly tried and failed to think of something better to say several times over. José watched the slope of his shoulders wilt till the other man was nearly putting his head level with José’s own, then relented. Not out of pity: he simply wasn’t getting any new knowledge from Terry’s continuing discomfiture. “Will the king be coming back to London any time soon?”

Terry’s head went up and he looked gratefully, painfully eager to answer, even though it rapidly became clear from his words that he didn’t actually know anything about that. Of course José could’ve guessed that, given that Lampard was the one with entry to the royal court, but he was curious as to how close Lampard and Terry were. Some otherwise lowborn friends of friends could be astoundingly well-informed as to the state of high politics, and by way of various means and methods.

José let Terry go on after that, interrupting just enough to make it seem like he was still engaged in the discussion, and while the conversation went from kings to marketplace to gutter, he more thoroughly considered the implications of Southgate, or at least somebody in Southgate’s household, working together with Lampard. He’d already known that Lampard would have had to have things planned well in advance of Nuno Gomes’ arrival, and moreover, have spoken to somebody with knowledge of the Portuguese court, but this spoke of a little more than that. Southgate had been recommended by the English to Nuno Gomes as a merchant who got on well with the foreign traders who came to London, and who had a house sizable enough to be fit for renting by a royal ambassador. Now José was curious as to who had given the English that recommendation.

If Rui Costa really wanted to make sure Nuno survived the next round of intrigues, José irritably thought, he should have looked into that long ago. In Portugal he’d had the position to do it, whereas José had been kept busy since the moment he’d returned from India with making reports to the bureaucracy and settling with the investors who’d joined with Nuno in bankrolling the expedition. And trying—and failing—to keep Dias from antagonizing everyone against them.

And burying his dead.

The memory made José flinch and he hated himself for it. He’d hated it last night and he hated it more, in the clarity that daylight and wakefulness brought, and so he turned abruptly away. The movement nearly brought him across Terry’s path and he stepped back just as the other man did the same, exclaiming. Then Terry gave himself a shake, blinking, and looked uncertainly at José. “Sorry, am I boring you? I know barely anything about the Portuguese, so I’ve—”

“No, I was simply…” José gazed about and glimpsed a shadowy thing high on the wall in the room to his left. He frowned, peering more closely at it, and then abandoned the conversation to go look.

As he’d thought, it was a ship. A model, nearly as long as the formal dining table on which it was sitting, half-built with more pieces and tools scattered about it. It had beautiful lines, sleek and long, and...and José stooped down so his eyes were level with the middle of the sides, examining the tiny square holes cut in the sides. They were above the waterline, but only in fair weather and in the slightest bit of a squall, they’d leak horrifically if their little covers didn’t seal perfectly. It seemed like a glaring flaw in what was otherwise a fantastic piece of workmanship.

“Oh, I thought you’d like that. I’ve been trying to talk my way to this, but…well, what do you think?” Terry’s voice came from very close behind José.

José refrained from starting. He merely turned his head, found Terry leaning so close that their faces were almost touching, and looked at the other man till Terry hastily moved to a less insinuating distance. The other man nervously rubbed a hand over his head as he strode about the table to pick up a delicate awl.

“This is Frank’s little hobby. And mine recently, though of course I don’t know nearly as much as he does about real ships. He’s been trying to teach me…don’t know how successful that’s been.” As he spoke, John picked up and discarded what looked like pieces of planking for the unfinished part. He moved each bit of wood quickly but purposefully through his fingers till he found one that felt right to him, and then he leaned forward to try and fit it in place. It didn’t quite match the spot, so he set about adjusting it with the awl. “He and I go down to the river, when we’ve both got some time, and try these out on the water. There hasn’t been a real war with France for ages so there’s no money to do it with real ships unless you know it’ll do right away.”

Frank had some interesting ideas regarding rigging, and it was only by the smallest margin that José’s sense of diplomacy overrode his professional pride to keep him from dryly mentioning that. But Lampard’s innovations for hull and keel shaping were genuinely intriguing—and the fact that he actually went through the trouble to build such extensive working models was as well.

“You’d like to go to France?” José said, swiping his finger along the top of the table. Then he turned over his finger and looked at the faint brownish smudge on its pad before rubbing it with his thumb, feeling the sawdust. He twisted about and looked at the floor, but didn’t see what he was looking for.

“Well, I think they’re about due for a good beating. And it’s really—it’s disappointing that they’ve managed to gain so much land from our troubles. But those are over, so I can’t see why we can’t get that back.” Terry spoke his true opinion quickly, and then attempted to soften its potentially treasonous implications even more quickly.

José snorted and moved out from the table, staring at the floor till he did see it: a tell-tale change in color between parts of the floor. Very slight, but still enough to say that the servants weren’t allowed to clean all the way up to the table. “Of course I’m not an Englishman, but I think it would be difficult for you to keep your supply and communication lines open over the Channel. The seas and winds are very irregular.”

“But if you have a good enough ship—” John began hotly. He stopped when José looked up, then ducked his head and went back to fiddling with the ship. Apparently he’d remembered he was supposed to be pursuing his awkward version of courtship, but his real feelings still intruded into his following words. “It’s not that much, in terms of distance. I’m sure if men can brave the monsters at the end of Africa, a few miles of water—”

“There are no monsters at the end of Africa. Very odd men, and animals, but nothing I’d call a monster,” José said. He retreated to the ship and resumed looking over the details of the aft end. “It is a difficult journey, though. And I know that because I’ve done it and I can tell you I wouldn’t like to sail the Channel regularly.”

Several conflicting emotions tried to push their way onto Terry’s face, and one of them was a kind of bewildered disappointment, as if he’d been expecting José to greet his notions with acclaim. But he shook off the rest before José could fully identify them, and took a deep breath as he lifted a spliced railing fragment towards the model. “Well, I can imagine you must be tired. They say it’s nearly a year to get to India…”

In reply José merely grunted. He wasn’t about to get caught out giving away good trade secrets as easily as that.

“I’ve never even been on the open ocean. Frank has, since his uncle’s up in Portsmouth, but I’ve lived on the Thames my whole life.” A strong note of wistfulness had entered John’s voice, and when José looked up, he found the other man staring distantly at the little bit of wood he held. “London’s a grand city, but I’ve heard the foreign merchants talk. Outside you all think we’re happy to stay with each other, and turn a blind eye to the rest. Except for France, but that’s our land anyway. And I don’t think that’s true. I think we’ve been distracted, but give us a chance and we could go farther than India.”

José kept his peace and merely watched the other man. After a moment, John set the piece of wood down and raised his head to meet José’s gaze with clear, sober, determined eyes so it was clear he hadn’t been limiting himself to metaphors. It was not, however, clear whether he’d been talking generally or if deeply embedded within that passionate defense had been some sort of personal invitation.

The muscle in John’s jaw firmed, and then he pursed his lips as to go on, but before he could, the sound of footsteps came from the hall. He half-turned, then spun about completely and went to greet Lampard with indecent speed and enthusiasm. The other man reciprocated, though he was looking over his shoulder at José as his hands patted John on the back and then slid up to affectionately run over John’s head.

“Sorry for my lateness, but I thought I’d told John not to keep you from dinner just on my account. I hope he wasn’t boring you about Barking,” Frank said, finally disengaging himself from Terry.

“No. No, he wasn’t,” José said after a moment. And they went to dinner.

* * *

Cristiano leaned forward, the smile on his face both insinuating and conspiratorial. “How were the Englishmen? They seemed very sad to see you go.”

José glanced over as he clucked his horse through the gate, then turned the beast down the street. “First wipe your mouth. I don’t want to know about _your_ Englishman.”

A long sigh pushed up behind José’s back, but it took Cristiano a few moments to catch up himself. The streets, as always, were packed with people who didn’t flinch from pressing right up against them. “Very funny. We didn’t do anything, except eat some food he’d sneaked from the kitchen. It was good.”

“What made it to the table was tolerable enough.” English food was just as bland and heavy as José had remembered, unfortunately. “So?”

“So I was right, and Alan’s the footman from Southgate’s place. He says he was just bringing a message for…” Cristiano dramatically paused. He also let a dirty-faced girl no more than ten or eleven elbow his horse aside in her screaming chase after an even smaller little boy. In an instant the crowd wedged itself into the gap, and when Cristiano finally caught up to José a few minutes later, he looked far too irritated to bother with that nonsensical play-acting. The English’s brashness occasionally was good for something. “For _Terry_ , as if the man lives here or something. Southgate wanted a special permit for some cargo of his. But Alan knows the names of all the scullery maids, so…”

José flicked a glance at him. “Not your type, then?”

After a moment, Cristiano ceased mimicking a gulping fish. His eyes narrowed. “Oh, now you insult me. Look, I found out what you wanted—these English are targeting us for something of their own.”

That ship on the table, sleek but heavily-armed, and Lampard’s supposed preference for war. Henry’s lukewarm attitude towards the French who’d helped him get his throne, compared to the rabid attitudes everyone else in this dreary, damp land had against that people. “That’s interesting.”

“You’re just pretending you’re bored. I know. Maybe I don’t know when you’re thinking at me to go yell at the idiots in the rigging, but I can tell when you’re bored, anyway,” Cristiano muttered. He slicked his forelock back from his eyes, pulling his lower lip up in that excuse for a determined face he had. When he was actually determined, he was too busy to make faces. “So how was dinner? _Not_ the food, I mean. The rest.”

“Boring. Terry will be around with what we need in the morning, so it was useful, at least. But the rest…” José shrugged his shoulder at the intense sensation of irritation emanating from the other man. “I told them a little about the African coast, and disappointed them with the fact that India is civilized enough to have merchants as hard-nosed as anywhere else in the world. And then they told me a lot about how they don’t know much about ships.”

That apparently confused Cristiano, since he spent nearly a street and a half mulling it over. “But Lampard’s uncle runs a major port. And he—”

“He knows a lot about the _navy_. Not so much about ships.” Which explained a little about why Lampard was also sticking so close to Nuno, since the Count was known in the Portuguese court for his naval interests. Of course, that didn’t mean Nuno actually knew his spars from his foremasts. “He was interested in what it’s like to sail the open ocean.”

They turned down another street, and Cristiano immediately had to pull up sharply to avoid an overturned wagon. He swerved his horse around it, then slowed as he glimpsed the walls of the Tower rearing above the raucous, lively streets. A raven was slowly circling one of the turrets, but stooped to fall upon something as they watched.

“That’s where they put their high criminals,” José said.

“The Channel isn’t open ocean,” Cristiano abruptly remarked. He turned in the saddle to look hard at José. “Why’s he want to know about that? Where is he going?”

José shrugged. Then he shook his head and clucked his horse on, but Cristiano wouldn’t be put off so easily. The other man didn’t ask again, but he followed so closely on the heels of José’s mount that the beast nearly shied into a fish-seller’s stall, which gifted José with an entirely unwanted whiff of the rank things. He grimaced at the eels, their sticky-shiny black coils ending in a violent blotch of scarlet where their heads had been roughly cut away, and urged his horse on.

“Learn Italian,” José finally said. He snorted at the peeved, uncomprehending look on Cristiano’s face and turned his horse’s head towards Southgate’s house.

* * *

“Inzaghi was in just a few minutes ago. How’d you know?” Nuno had been in the act of rising from his desk, but now he sat back down. He gestured towards the chair across from him, then dropped his hands onto the arms of his chair.

José looked out in the hall instead of at the chair. He heard Nuno start to say Rui was somewhere else, but he hadn’t been thinking about that and he absently shook his head as a signal to the other man. Then he turned, sighing, and went out into the hall.

One sharp thud later, he returned and seated himself in the empty chair. The bones in his back groaned a bit, making him bite the inside of his mouth; he wasn’t meant to ride horses, and the cold damp didn’t help. “He’s from Milan. He’s going to be interested in anything that might save that place from being overrun by…who is it now?”

“Probably France. Maximilian’s too busy with the Swiss to bother with Italy right now,” Nuno said. His brows had drawn together and his fingers were very still, their tips balanced precariously on the elaborate but heavy carving of the chair. “Portugal’s got little to do with Italy at the moment. He’d be better off in Spain if he’s looking for that.”

José made himself take a breath before he spoke. “And Henry’s about to marry his son to a Spanish princess.”

After a moment, Nuno drew in a deep breath and leaned to his right, his hand coming up to press against his mouth. He stared off over José’s left shoulder. His other hand occasionally rippled against the arm of his chair.

A scuffling noise came from the hall and José immediately glanced over, but nothing else came of it. Then a muffled but distinctly English voice called out to someone and José relaxed; for once Cristiano had taken the order and obeyed. Not that that didn’t mean the nuisance wasn’t down in the kitchens or something like that, reacquainting himself with Southgate’s man, but at least he wasn’t trying to meddle in his own country’s diplomacy.

“I had a message this morning from the king, which informs me that he’ll be in London by this evening and that he’ll be honored to grant me an audience two days from now. And also Inzaghi managed to drop essentially the same information when he came to see me.” Nuno twisted slightly so he could pick up a quill pen from the desk. He’d been in the middle of writing a letter, it appeared, and now he began to revise his draft, crossing out words and entire lines with thick black streaks. “It was a social call, to answer your question. According to Inzaghi, he was merely being neighborly to a colleague.”

The part of Nuno’s personality that was truly frustrating to José was his damned inconsistency. Sometimes he was so intuitively brilliant that José almost admired the man, but the rest of the time he was annoyingly like Cristiano in his assumption that the world worked in a certain way and couldn’t possibly work in any other. “Really.”

“No, of course he was fishing. He seems like an intelligent enough man, and if he knows what books I bought last year for my library, he knows I’m here to argue against the very marriage he supports,” Nuno muttered. The scratching of the pen paused as the feather tipped towards his mouth. Then he shook his head, flicked away the sheet of paper and picked up a fresh clean one. “Actually, he wouldn’t even have needed to dig. Everyone knows Ferdinand and Isabella poisoned Afonso so he wouldn’t inherit both Portugal and Spain, and our king’s never been the same since poor Afonso’s death.”

“It was a questionable marriage in the first place. If our king had cared so much about his son, he shouldn’t have married him off to the daughter of his enemy.” José shrugged at the warning look Nuno gave him. “You could consider bringing that up as a cautionary tale. Spanish princesses tend to be fatal for the unfortunate princes who marry them.”

Nuno pressed his lips together. His writing slowed, then speeded up again. “José, I’m not so blind as to realize you detest taking orders from me, but believe me, I’m only offering sensible advice when I say to stay out of court affairs. And also to not cast doubts on our king’s decisions.”

“I’m only talking to you and you’ve got even less reason to tell him about my unpopular opinions than I do, considering you’d be implicated as my backer. You asked me to go out and see what was going on—I’m doing so. And if you don’t like what I’ve found, that’s not my fault,” José replied. He gazed about the room, bored with the banal turn the conversation had taken, and his eyes happened to alight on that hunting tapestry again. It didn’t look any better than before, and in fact even worse, as now he was familiar enough with the image to begin noticing the flaws in the weave. “But as you like—you talk to the kings, I don’t. I just talk to everyone else.”

After a long, tense moment, Nuno dropped his quill and slewed himself about, and sharply enough to attract José’s attention. Two reddish patches were beginning to burn in the other man’s cheeks. “If you’re trying to force something, you should have had enough respect for yourself, if not your country, to do it in India. I have sympathy, but—my God, this malingering is ridiculous. Frankly, it never seemed like you appreciated Deco that much, but if you really—”

“You can speak of him when you have enough sense to realize why I didn’t act the fool and get myself killed in India,” José snapped.

When he’d spoken he’d also jerked himself forward without thinking about it. He noticed now, since he was uncomfortably teetering on the edge of his seat, and roughly pushed himself back. Then he threw up his hands so they hooked over the arms of his chair, looking at Nuno and waiting for the inevitable order to remember his place.

The first expression that twitched its way onto Nuno Gomes’ face certainly was shock, but strangely enough, what followed it was less offended and more…thoughtful. But the other man turned away before José could see into what that thought developed, stiff-shouldered with his lower lip caught between his teeth. He let it slip out as he took up a paper with an unfamiliar hand’s writing on it. “Well, we won’t speak of him then. So Lampard does have designs on Spanish politics himself, and that’s why he’s interested in us?”

It wasn’t precisely a dismissal, but had something else to it, something that set José’s teeth on edge as much as it relieved him, since no matter his feelings about Nuno, he was firmly uninterested in having that discussion with the man. And so dwelling on the near-escape was a waste of time, José told himself, and turned his mind back to the political scene. “I think Lampard has designs he likes to float on the river in his spare time. Or so his friend tells me, at least. England’s not about to support another civil war, I think, so I suppose that’s the only place he can go.”

“Not the politics, then. The sailing? That idiot Cristoforo Colombo got the Catholic kings to fund his explorations, but Portugal still has the better navigators,” Nuno commented. He followed up his words with a warning look at José, who avoided rolling his eyes only with difficulty. “I hope he doesn’t presume we’re simply going to hand over the fruits of years and years of hard work and lost lives. But then why are you asking about Inzaghi?”

“Because I don’t know what his interest here is.” Which was the truth, though it didn’t stretch quite as far as Nuno would have liked to know, but José had only agreed to help the man. He’d never agreed to sacrifice himself to pursue that end, and to be honest, he was determined not to now. Nuno could waste his sympathy on someone who didn’t mind the low blows. “Lampard obviously arranged for you to stay here. He’s not an idiot and he should know what it means that the Milanese ambassador is your neighbor. For that matter, I’d wonder who exactly suggested this house to him in the first place.”

Nuno finished the word he was currently writing, his brow slightly wrinkled as he forced a last drop of ink from the quill’s tip. Then he lifted the feather and peered briefly at the end before reaching for the sharpening knife at the top of the desk. “In that case, I had the impression that Inzaghi was sounding me out, as if he didn’t think I’m wholly in agreement with my king’s opposition to the English-Spanish alliance.”

“‘In that case’?” José repeated.

“He’s a difficult man to read. He also mentioned trade agreements, very vaguely. It seems the Duke of Milan isn’t going to sit around and complain as we bypass the Italian traders to get our spices, but wants to adapt to the new markets. The Genoans and Venetians overcharge him as well as us.” Little black shavings dropped away from the knife, then skittered over the desk as Nuno blew them away. He brushed off a few lingering ones, then put the knife away and dipped his pen into the inkwell. “I’ll be busy preparing for Henry, but I did promise to send someone over to hear Inzaghi’s proposal in more detail. Are you interested?”

José didn’t answer right away. Out of surprise, but when he noticed the careful way Nuno’s head was cocked, the sudden tension in the other man’s shoulders, he assumed a more cautious expression. If Nuno thought he was suspicious of a trap, that was fine as well.

Nuno looked up then, and for a few moments they simply gazed at each other. Then Nuno grimaced and made a dismissive gesture with his free hand. “I don’t have the power to negotiate anything like that. I’m strictly here to oppose Catalina and Arthur’s betrothal. I told him that, so he already is clear that he’d only be providing details of a proposal to take back to our king. And I’ll make it clear here that I’m only interested in seeing what use he’d be to allowing me to go home without having a banishment or a death sentence waiting for me.”

He added a few more words to his new draft, the quill-tip swooping as it ended in a little flourish on the last letter. Then he flipped the pen in his hand so the feathery end was pointing in and the needle-sharp tip was pointing out, towards José. He turned his head and only his head to level his gaze at José, his eyes still faintly morose but his jaw firm enough.

“And I know that you’d like to go home as well. My heirs, if they’re permitted my estate, wouldn’t let you in, and neither would anyone João’s likely to give my estates and rank to. You know I’m depending on that, but you also know that it’s true,” he said. His voice was soft but every word was as distinct as if it’d been cut from glass with a diamond.

“When am I supposed to see him? I got the supplies out of Lampard, so I’ll be busy with my ship,” José replied. Calmly enough, as this was no more than the usual irritation from Nuno, and anyway the threat was as clear as Nuno made it seem. There was no point in pretending it wasn’t.

Nuno went back to his letter, and this time appeared to mean to complete it. At least, he didn’t look again. “Whenever you like. He apparently keeps an informal place, so if you let his household know early in the day, he’ll be available in the afternoon. I won’t be, so don’t come again till Rui sends you a message, but as soon as you do see Inzaghi, I’d like to know.”

“Cristiano will drop off a report.” José waited a moment longer before making the slight obeisance Nuno’s rank required. Then he started towards the door.

“José.” When José looked, Nuno was still busily writing, but the other man had put out his free hand. Its fingers were half-curled as if to call José back, but then they snapped into the palm. Then Nuno completely withdrew his hand, reaching instead for a new sheet. “I was sorry to hear about Deco.”

It sounded like he genuinely meant it. And that, and not all Nuno’s previous barbs, came the closest to making José lose his temper. Because what did Nuno have to be sorry for, and anyway, what did he know? He’d gotten along well with Deco, a long time ago when they all assumed better things about each other, but after that he hadn’t left Portugal with them. He hadn’t had to tolerate anything, and he said he was sorry. What did he know about that?

Nothing, José reminded himself, and took firm hold of the doorknob. He pulled on that, and without another word he stepped into the hall. Of course Rui was waiting there, and José bothered enough to give him a curt nod before heading off towards the servant’s quarters to retrieve Cristiano. But no more than that. It wasn’t deserved.

* * *

The clatter Cristiano made as he came down the steps alerted José long before the other man’s banging entrance made the maps on the table flutter. José waited for those to settle before setting down his pencil and looking up.

“The Englishman—men. They’re here. Both of them.” Cristiano paused to catch up on his breath, then wasted the gathered effort on a sneer. “They’re trying to poke about and look at the rigging.”

“All right.” After locking up everything of value—not including the maps of Africa and India, which José had moved to a less obvious and more secure location—José got out from behind the table. He blew out the flame in the lantern, got his cloak from the wall, and then ushered Cristiano out into the hall.

As was usual, Cristiano lingered to watch in disappointment as José locked the door. Maybe the man insisted he didn’t want to be a mere replacement, but he sometimes acted as if he deserved that much. Which, though José wasn’t about to explain it to him, was exactly why he was never going to have as much license as…as Deco had appropriated to himself, actually.

José paused with his hand on the door, then shook himself and pivoted on his heel. He _was_ remembering correctly, and he hadn’t ever given Deco permission to do everything that Deco had done. It’d simply been understood. Whereas Cristiano knew a lot, but didn’t quite seem to understand anything.

“We’re about halfway done with the broken spars. How long are you going to be with the Englishmen?” Cristiano asked.

“Long enough, so go ahead and get everything done that you can tonight. I didn’t like the way the sky looks, so I don’t want half-fixed things breaking again in the night. If you can’t finish something, don’t start it.” A heavy tread above their heads made José briefly look up, but then he went on without trying to decipher the muffled voices that accompanied the steps. He noted that Cristiano opted otherwise, but didn’t defer to the other man’s choice.

Cristiano was young enough to still go bounding up the steps after José, anyway. And when he did so, he arrived on the deck a bare second after José, and with only the slightest unevenness in his breath. “All right, no spying on—”

Lampard came forward, leading with an outstretched hand and a broad but faintly hesitant grin on his face. José paused, blinking—he had been listening to Cristiano, but was too used to cutting out about half of what the other man said to have really understood why Cristiano had emphasized ‘English _men_.’ He’d assumed that had meant Terry and some servant.

“I’ve never seen a caravel like this one,” Lampard said. His smile faded a little when José failed to immediately greet him.

José suppressed a grimace and promptly rectified that, albeit with the proper degree of reticence and deference. He also ignored Cristiano’s muttered comment that he’d be at the stern, making sure the English carpenters didn’t warp the planking when they put it in, and turned his back to the other man as Cristiano stalked off. “It’s special. It’s gone places no other ship has, and sometimes it was hard to get the right materials to take care of it, so we made do with what we had.”

It seemed Lampard didn’t even notice Cristiano—possibly why Cristiano had taken such a dislike to him—but Terry’s head had gone up at the sharp thud of Cristiano’s heel against the deck. He’d moved a little to the side and then stayed there, watching Cristiano go with a thoughtful look on his face, but now he came back to exchange greetings with José. “Well, I’d hope that you won’t have that problem while you’re in England. I’ve brought what you asked for, best quality that I could find…if there’s a problem with any of it, just let me know.”

Just beyond Terry, José’s crew and some men that Terry and Lampard presumably had brought with them were beginning to haul pieces of lumber and roll barrels off the gangplank onto the ship. José thanked Terry and Lampard with the expected flourishes, but couldn’t help himself and went forward to inspect what had been brought. He stopped the nearest man, then took a plank from that man’s load to examine the hardness of the wood and the fineness of the grain.

“Is it all right?” Lampard’s voice came from very close to José’s shoulder.

The other man had come up with startling quietness, and it was only the weight of José’s thick cloak that prevented his start from being seen. He gave the piece of wood back to the workman, then stepped away under the pretense of looking over the rail. “It’s good wood. Well-seasoned.”

“Good. I know how important that is, especially when the weather’s as changeable as it is in the East. As I hear it is—I’ve never been there, of course.” Clearly humility didn’t come easily to Lampard, but he managed to soften his momentary misstep with an engaging smile. He trailed after José, looking at everything José looked at even when he obviously didn’t know why José was interested in it.

Terry had remained where he was, and now was trying to dictate where the workmen went. José’s crew gave him the odd curious glance, but in the main ignored him as they did what they’d been trained to do. The English workmen, however, gave great deference to Terry. So much so, in fact, that they were listening to him when it should have been obvious from what the crew members were doing that they shouldn’t have been. To his credit, Terry was trying to pay attention to that, but whatever he knew about ships, it didn’t extend to the running of them.

José looked up and squinted into the web of lines and spars that surrounded the mainmast, but didn’t spot any silhouette resembling Cristiano. He opened his mouth, frowning, but then jerked around as Cristiano’s voice sharply barked from a few yards away. The other man came striding up to Terry, his shoulders thrown back and his jaw aggressively thrust out, and began roughly directing both the crew and the English workmen; with the second group he used hand gestures and the occasional thickly-accented but well-chosen English word. For a moment, Terry looked openly irritated.

“Again, I thank you very much for your help. It’s been difficult to make the shipyards here understand what I need,” José said. He pushed himself away from the rail and went past Lampard about a pace before looking back. “This is no castle, but I still like to be hospitable. Can I offer you a drink?”

“Certainly. I’d be honored. And thankful, if you’re offering something a bit more in a soldier’s line and not a noblewoman’s. The wind’s terrible today.” Lampard grimaced as a fierce cold blast took him squarely in the face, then half-turned so his shoulder was taking the brunt of it. He cast José a look that was far too conspiratorial, considering their flimsy acquaintance.

Cristiano was going to prod incessantly about this later, José thought. Then he invited Lampard down to his cabin. He did catch the flash of surprise and then the meaningful look Lampard tipped to Terry before the other man accepted, but pretended to ignore both. And of course he ignored Cristiano’s blatant stare as he showed Lampard the way.

As they made their way belowdecks and down the short hall, Lampard took care of the conversation with his questions about José’s method of planking the _Leya_ ’s hull, the way they tacked into the wind and things of that nature. José answered as vaguely as he could, and then even more vaguely once he noticed that Lampard still seemed to understand what he was saying. The man really had dedicated himself to naval pursuits.

José offered him a choice of a bottle of good wine Nuno had accidentally left behind and the much rawer stuff that was rationed out to the crew, and interestingly enough, Lampard took the crew’s drink. He didn’t choke or cough as it went down, though his eyes did widen a little. Then he looked down into his half-empty glass, watching it swing between his fingers along to the rolling of the ship. “Good enough to get you through a frozen sea. If there’s that down past Africa. Sometimes I hear that, sometimes I hear the sea’s boiling.”

“It’s the sea. It doesn’t freeze or steam away,” José said, topping up his glass. Then he sipped from that as he wedged the bottle into a corner, making sure it wouldn’t come loose and spill itself all over the floor. He moved back and put a hand against the edge of his map-table for balance, then drummed his fingers against the table-top. “Why are you so interested in India?”

“Well, it’s just fascinating,” Lampard replied after a telling moment’s silence. He did quickly warm to his subject, his eyes bright and his hands nearly flinging the rest of his drink into the wall as he gestured. “Ever since I was a boy, I’ve been surrounded by sailors—my family’s interests, you see. They told me the most wonderful stories about the East. So wonderful my father used to lay in on me for listening to such ‘arrant nonsense,’ to be honest…but I’ve always wondered if maybe, just maybe, there’s a chance of it being true.”

And maybe he was telling the truth. His excitement looked genuine in the dark, and then survived the sudden harsh light as José relit the lantern. “Why are you so interested in Portugal?”

This time, Lampard was a little more careful in answering, and he didn’t pretend he wasn’t. That spark of enthusiasm was still in his eyes, but he was beginning to assess things, to look at José and not at the bank of lockers behind José. “It’s a great country if you’re a sailor. I hear, anyway. Of course you people play things close to the chest, but the way sailing is, the way the ocean’s as free as it is…things still come over the water. We know that your king’s built up possibly the greatest collection of minds on the art of navigation that’s ever been gathered in one place.”

“He’s very dedicated to upholding our legacy of exploration. But exploration is about finding things first—it doesn’t mean anything if you’re second,” José said slowly. He took another drink, rolling the stuff about in his mouth before swallowing. It left behind a tingling burn that eventually smoothed into a lingering sourness. “It doesn’t mean anything because the first one there is not going to want to give up what they’ve earned.”

Lampard’s face sobered. He moved, and at first José thought that the man was moving away, but then it became clear that Lampard was only shifting his weight. His shoulders hunched, then rolled back as he pulled his cloak away from his feet; his doublet briefly strained at its seams, showing that he wasn’t one of those soft courtiers who depended on their intrigues to carry along their bodies. “Of course. People deserve what they’ve gotten with their sweat and blood. But it’s a—it’s a much bigger world than I think people have realized, and I don’t think that parts of it should be shut off just because someone far away is thinking of their pocketbook. People should have a chance to go and see if they can make something of it. Sometimes the first to get there doesn’t see everything that can be done.”

He gazed steadily at José, but as time went on and José said nothing, Lampard became visibly uneasy. His boot-heel scraped against the floor, and then he ducked his head to sweep his hand back over the side of it.

“I mean no offense to your king and your country, obviously. They’ve—you’ve done some marvelous things. My thought just is that the—well, you can’t own the ocean. You just can’t. The water is out there, it’s been out there since God poured it onto the earth, and it should belong to everyone. It touches all the lands of the world and none of them should get to say who gets to sail on it,” Lampard finally added. His voice was quieter, but no less firm. “That’s all.”

“I can’t speak for my king, only obey him. But I can say, from what I know and I’ve seen, that you’re right. The water doesn’t belong to anyone but God. But land does, and land is where you are at the end of the journey.” José drained his glass, then set that aside. He glanced up as something thumped loudly, but then turned away when he heard Cristiano’s voice shouting at somebody. He put his hands flat on the table, leaning his weight on them. “Anyone who can sail is free to sail, but that doesn’t mean any port is free to them.”

Lampard raised his eyebrows. “Well, maybe that should be changed.”

“Maybe. I don’t know—I don’t know that much about what happens on land. But I do know…I know when people talk about freedom, they usually don’t mean freedom. They mean they should be free to have something and others shouldn’t,” José calmly replied.

He kept his position as Lampard first stepped back, then returned to where he’d been before. The muscle in Lampard’s jaw worked mightily as he sought to restrain his patent irritation, and several times he ducked and raised his head to flick burning glances at José. He finally cleared his throat and lifted his chin. “What exactly are you trying to say?”

“I don’t know.” José shrugged, then opened his eyes wider when it looked as if Lampard wasn’t going to believe him. “If you’re interested in what we Portuguese are doing with our scholars and mapmakers, you should apply to the Count of Porto. I was never part of that, and know little about it. If you’re interested in India, you should try and send a message to Vasco da Gama before he leaves for the East. I don’t know why you’re spending so much time with me.”

For a few minutes, Lampard simply looked at José as if José had suddenly grown another head. He pursed his lips, then put a hand to the back of his head as he glanced off to the side, still incredulous. Then he actually laughed, a surprisingly high sound, as he abruptly swung himself forward, letting himself fall hip-first against the other side of the table. “I’ve done my work. I looked at the Count, and at Dias and Da Gama, and I honestly believe that if I’m interested in advancing the art of sailing, _you’re_ the man to talk to.”

“I don’t build ships,” José snapped. “I can fix them, yes, but I don’t have…” he gestured at the work-table “…there are no chisels, no hammers here. I leave that to others.”

“Well, I build ships. And I’m quite good at it.” Lampard put his hand down on the table and leaned further towards José. He had a good-natured smile on his face, but his eyes were cool. “Why aren’t you flattered?”

José smiled himself, close-lipped and cold as the wind outside. “Because it’s not in my nature to be flattered. It’s my nature to want to know what’s really going on, and right now I’m not clear on why you’re courting me so persistently.”

“For someone who claims not to be interested in anything but his own trade, you’re quite cautious about everything else,” Lampard said after a moment. He shrugged and glanced down at his hand, then back up at José. “I’m not asking you to betray any of your loyalties, José.”

“Say that in Spanish,” José told him.

Lampard’s eyes widened, and then the man jerked up straight, all but ripping itself from the table. He was young but he did have presence, and invoked that now so he seemed to grow several inches, his shoulders and his hard expression crowding out the rest of the room. His mouth opened.

“I know my loyalties better than you, no matter what you think you’ve learned about me. And I think, for a man who _has_ been to those Eastern lands you long after so much, I can tell when I’m looking at a fantasy and when I’m looking at the reality.” José lifted his own hands from the table, then crossed his arms over his chest as he looked back.

“I could have you in prison before you could even—”

“You could, and then everybody, not only me, would wonder why you’re bothering with a miserable Portuguese captain. And they would think, why would Frank Lampard deal with the Portuguese? And then you’d be in your own trouble,” José snapped. He took a step backward without looking, then another one. With the second step, his heel hit the wall; he moved his other foot back alongside the first, then leaned against the wall. “Don’t threaten me. You don’t think you can own the ocean, that’s good sense. But you should also know you can’t force people to believe in you, either. They either do or they don’t. They choose.”

Lampard swallowed several times, the fingers of his clenched hand flexing in the air. Then he put down the hand, pressing it hard against the top of the table. “And you don’t.”

“No, I do. I saw your ship.” José waited for the other man to look up, and then for the incredulity to pass from Lampard’s face. Then he shrugged himself off the wall and came forward a little, but still kept his arms crossed. “I believe you love your country, I believe you love ships. I even believe that you want to talk to me for the reasons you say. But I don’t know, and so I cannot believe, that all these things are true because you…want to what, sail forever and ever? Never see land again?”

“I thought you said you didn’t care about land,” Lampard said. His voice was tight, but at least he was listening. His eyes didn’t waver from José’s face.

“I don’t, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t think about it. I have to—that’s the way of the world. And so I cannot believe that you don’t also think about it,” José answered. He uncrossed his arms then, rolling his shoulders to loosen their tensed muscles.

After a moment, Lampard dropped his head. He brought up his other hand and pressed it to the table as well; his elbows bent as he sank down a little. Then he pushed himself up and his chin rose, and he stared hard and long and soberly at José.

“Well, you’re right. You’re…you’re what they said you were, as far as that goes.” A faint note of admiration crept back into Lampard’s voice. “But you’re wrong, with all that talk about Spain and Portugal. I don’t give a damn about—I’m sorry, I don’t want to offend you, but if you want honesty, I’ll be honest. I don’t care about them, except what help I can get from them. The only land I care about is England.”

“Then why talk to—”

All the irritation finally escaped from Lampard in a loud sigh and a sharp slap of his hands against the table. He immediately looked up at José, who merely raised his brows; interestingly enough, Lampard seemed a little embarrassed by himself. A touch of color shaded his cheeks as he rather hastily pulled back his hands. “England is an island. We’ve always needed the sea, and I think in the future, we’re going to need it more than ever. I know—I think you’ve heard I’m interested in France too, if you’ve heard that nonsense about Spain. Well, I was. Interested in France. But I’ve changed my mind lately, and I don’t think there’s any more point in going to war over there. I don’t think trying to conquer France will get us anywhere.”

Another loud thud came from above, startling Lampard: his head snapped back, and then he moved away from the table as he returned his gaze to José. His right hand nervously twisted around his left wrist, and he darted a glance towards the door before continuing. Which was curious, since he didn’t seem to have any similar doubts about José’s trustworthiness. He simply began telling José.

“We’ve been bogged down in France so long, and it’s done nothing except make a mess of things here. That’s how they like it, but…well, we’ve got to look in other places. Spain and Portugal are being more sensible, looking towards the sea. Maybe you can’t own the water, but you can be better at sailing on it than anyone else.” Lampard ducked his head and scrubbed at the side of his face, then pulled his hand over his eyes and down along his jaw. He searched José’s face for something, the set of his shoulders wary. Though his mouth remained loose enough. “It doesn’t matter if we can’t win on land, as long as we win at sea. The sea lets you go anywhere, but land locks you into place. So we need to go to sea. That’s what England has to do. That’s what I want to do.”

He stopped there, his mouth shutting with a crisp click. He’d crept forward again till he was leaning so far over the table that José could just feel the faintest graze of the man’s breath—and the emotion had gotten to Lampard so his words had run ahead of his air, and now he was panting in his attempt to recover. A thin line of sweat edged his brow, trailing off behind his ear like a wayward strand of hair.

“That’s something like what the Portuguese king seems to think as well,” José eventually said.

Lampard tilted his head to the side, his eyebrows drawing together as his lips compressed into a thin line. Then he shrugged, rough and almost arrogant but for the nervous light in his eyes. “I’m an Englishman. I understand loyalties to your country. And…well, if you like, I suppose you can take that back to your king, and tell him England is going to sea. I told you what I think because I want to do the right and gentlemanly thing, but you’re free to do whatever you want with it.”

“I’m not.” José lifted and dropped his right shoulder in response to the other man’s curious look. “Free, that is. And as I keep saying, I am uninterested in politics, except when it prevents me from plying my trade.”

It took a moment for Lampard to understand, to take José’s words and José’s steady stare and make the proper sense of it. Then he relaxed, but only a little. He glanced up at the ceiling again as on the deck, Terry’s voice rang out.

“You and he work very closely together, it seems. Does he think the same way about the sea?” José asked.

This time, Lampard fidgeted and looked sharply at José for no good reason that José could see. It was an innocent enough question, but Lampard treated it as if José had begun asking what King Henry thought of his ideas about England’s future. “Oh, John? He’s been with me since—we’ve been friends since childhood. My father took a liking to him, and sponsored him so we were taught together. He’s not so familiar with sailing, but he learns quickly. And he cares about England just as much. He’s a wonderful man to have with you.”

“I see.” And José did, in the way Lampard’s face softened and his eyes grew distant. They filled with a light that wasn’t as hard and sharp with ambition as when Lampard had been talking of his dreams, but that nevertheless was just as meaningful. And at that thought, something twisted in José’s chest. He bit down on the inside of his mouth till the ache went away, then took a deep breath. “I’m not English.”

“It wouldn’t matter. To me, anyway, and I think once people see what can be done, they’d come around,” Lampard immediately said. He still was riding the crest of his affectionate feelings, and not thinking sensibly. “I know I only know of you, but I do think that you and I, we feel the same way about the sea. John…he told me about the questions you were asking about my model, and maybe you don’t build them, but you do care about everything about them. And I do build them, so if you…”

José cleared his throat, and then when that didn’t immediately stop Lampard’s excited rambling, he moved forward to rap his fist against the table. He waited for the other man to look at him, truly look at him, before he spoke. “I’m not going to be English.”

It was a while before Lampard came up with an answer to that, and in the meantime, his face was a study in confusion and disappointment. Like every other noble who’d ever mistaken José for a servant or a dog, or something like that.

“But you can’t do anything in Portugal. I do know that: I know you’ve been banned from sailing to the East again. And I understand—like I said, I love England so I know how you feel…but you’re a man with brains and talent, and more than that, you’re somebody who seems to know what he’s…well, what you’re worth. I can’t believe that you’re that willing to let yourself go to waste,” Lampard said. He shook his head, looked at José, and then shook his head again as a disbelieving little chuckle slipped from him.

That, to be honest, was not the kind of argument that José had expected him to make, and so José didn’t have a ready reply for it. Not that that meant he found it convincing, or even more likely to incline him towards Lampard. But he did have to reassess the other man.

“What I do with my life is not your business,” he finally replied. He reached out, and after a moment, Lampard handed over his glass. After putting that away, José slid out from behind the table. He couldn’t force Lampard to force before the other man wanted to, but he could make it clear that he was no longer interested in cooperating.

“But shouldn’t it at least be _your_ business?” Lampard took a step towards José, and then another so he was standing within reaching distance. He was taller than José by several inches and he strove to use all of them, angling himself so his shadow fell over José.

That, anyway, was more like the nonsense to which José was accustomed, and so he had no trouble looking through the shadow to the man. “My business, as you seem to have forgotten, is not with the East. It’s with sailing.”

He left it at that. He wasn’t entirely certain that Lampard understood, but the other man at least seemed to gather that José was done with talking. Which Lampard didn’t like, and for a moment it seemed as if his temper were going to break out again, but then he abruptly turned. He walked towards the door, then looked back over his shoulder—and again, that strange disappointment was there on his face, as if he were less angry at losing control of the situation and more with simply being unable to convince José.

Then he twisted about, and without another word went out the door. José followed, slowly at first, but then faster near the end so they’d appear to arrive on the deck at the same time, as if relations between them were still cordial. And he also managed his farewell thanks well, though Lampard was stiff and cool. Terry looked curiously at both of them during the whole proceedings, and then he and Lampard hadn’t gotten down the whole length of the gangplank before he was leaning towards the other man, an earnestly inquiring expression on his face.

“So it didn’t go well?” Cristiano said, coming up behind José’s right shoulder.

José pivoted on one heel. “Why would you say that?”

Cristiano’s eyes widened and he rocked onto his back foot. Then of course his natural confidence made him stand his ground, but he still looked wary. “He looked like he’d like to hit you, and you look like you’d like to toss him in the water.”

It was on the tip of José’s tongue to say that he looked like no such thing, but thankfully his commonsense stopped him. He looked down, then rubbed his hand over his face. Then he turned around and had a look at what those carpenters were doing to his ship.

“It went differently than I thought it would,” he finally said. “Anything I need to know?”

“Message from Rui. You’re needed to do some translating at dinner tonight.” Cristiano glanced around them, then edged nearer and dropped his voice. “Also, the Italian sent a reply. He says you’re free to come and have the after-dinner drink with him.”

José raised his brows. “He knows I’m going to be translating?”

“It wasn’t my fault. He didn’t find out from anything I did, and actually, I don’t know how he found out from anything Rui did either. Rui sent his message with some wine—some present for Nuno that they didn’t want, I think,” Cristiano said.

After a moment, José pulled his hand down from his face; all the rubbing in the world wasn’t going to rid him of his migraine. Work, however, would distract him. “Since it’s not still up here, it should be somewhere where the men can’t get at it.” He glanced at Cristiano, and when the other man didn’t contradict him, nodded and began to walk towards the nearest mast. “Did you manage to actually finish anything?”

* * *

Inzaghi answered his own door. He was in some disarray, with the cuffs of his sleeves undone and a few fresh blots of ink on his fingertips, but he ushered José into his house and through the preliminary politesses with an understated silkiness.

“It belongs to a Gino Del Piero, a Venetian merchant. He’s returned to Venice, but was kind enough to lend his London house to me,” he remarked as they reached the end of the hall.

“I’ve met him.” And in fact had the displeasure of doing business with Del Piero and his son Alessandro, but José would let Inzaghi bring that up, if it was to be brought up.

It wasn’t, apparently, as Inzaghi dropped that line of conversation and instead began discussing the spice markets. He probed more than he offered, but José could truthfully say that he was as in the dark as Inzaghi was about how João was going to handle the fees for routing spices through Lisbon. And he did say so, idly watching the shadows pass back and forth behind the closed doors that lined the hall.

“I’m aware that you’ve been cut out of the ruling party at court,” Inzaghi said. He finally stopped in front of one door and produced a large brass key from nowhere in particular. His clothes were, despite their somber color, in keeping with the current fashions, but somehow he avoided the soft clink and jingle that accompanied every other man of note.

He let them into what appeared to be a small study—more for show than for work, José immediately decided. The stacks of parchment were too neat and the work-desk lacked any spilt ink to match the smudges on Inzaghi’s fingers. “I wasn’t aware that I was ever a part of it,” José answered. He stayed near the door, occasionally looking out for one of those men who’d been with Inzaghi in the street. “I’m merely a captain who—”

“And I’m merely an ambassador with limited power and a limited amount of time to use it.” Inzaghi leaned his hip against the side of his desk. He lowered his head as if deferring to José, but his shoulders stayed thrown back. “Do we understand each other?”

José watched the man tidy up his cuffs. Long, spidery fingers. “I’m not sure.”

“I know of you, from when you were working in Venice. I know of your reputation there, whereas I think everyone else knows of you from your reputation in Portugal and in India. Whatever they’ve heard of it that is believable, given the distance rumor would have to travel,” Inzaghi said, tone soft and inoffensive. He raised his head just enough to allow him to look at José.

There were people moving about all over this house, quiet and careful like cats. It was a little unnerving even for José, who was used to the almost living groans and shudders of ships, and so he finally stopped glancing into the hall. If he was going to be nervous, he’d make them give him a reason to be, and not give himself reasons to be with every passing shadow and creaking beam. “I suppose you would. What about Venice?”

“Nothing. I’m not interested in Venice. I’m not interested in India either.” Inzaghi shrugged as he turned his wrist; he was apparently having some difficulty with the fastening on that sleeve. His straight dark hair ghosted into his eyes, then slipped back as he looked up again. “I don’t think you are anymore, either. You were only interested in Venice for a very little time, I understand.”

“Despite my working so long out of that port,” José dryly said. He ignored a drawn-out shuffling noise that came from the hall. “I haven’t been in England that long, but it seems as if everyone is interested in very strange things. Not what I thought would interest them, but then, I’m not native to this country.”

Neither was Inzaghi, and he’d just expressed a disinterest in quite a few things. He took the hint with a slight hitch of one eyebrow, then finished with his cuff and put his hands back to rest them on the desk. “You know very well that they’re interested in you, and probably why. You always made it clear to the Venetian merchants what you were worth, and that was the only reason they tolerated you for so long.”

“They didn’t tolerate me. They _needed_ me.” José did his best to suppress his irritation, but the truth would out. “Why are you interested?”

“I’m not.” Inzaghi’s brows rose and fell, and then he half-turned to begin sifting through the papers on his desk. He knew what he was looking for, but he was making a show of it. “I’m only ever interested in what my lord is interested in, and that doesn’t include José Mourinho.”

A snort escaped José, and not with much protest on his part. “Then why am I here?”

“To be honest? Because the others are so interested, and I am interested in them,” Inzaghi said. His forehead gained a few furrows, then smoothed as his hand came to rest on one paper in particular. He was really a very good actor. “And also because I would like to believe that you and I can talk with more directness than if I’d gone to someone else, such as the Count of Porto.”

“But you did go to him.” José glanced himself, considered it a moment, and then reached out for the door-handle.

He didn’t pull it all the way shut, and as he pulled it, he also pushed at the rug beneath his feet so a corner of it would overlap the lintel, preventing anyone on the outside from pushing it the rest of the way. Then he stepped back, turned, and rested his shoulder against the jamb.

Inzaghi had been waiting, that paper still in his hand. It twisted back and forth, the movement so slight that at first José assumed it was merely a draft doing it, but then he saw the flexing in the man’s fingers. “I did, and from that it seemed clear to me that you’re the one I have to speak to, after all.”

“I don’t have any power, except how best to put my ship to others’ services,” José remarked in his mildest tone.

“And I don’t have any power except what I put at the disposal of my lord the Duke of Milan,” Inzaghi replied, his tone equally calm. For a moment he looked at José, assessing something. “It’s the same with any good servant.”

The word made José bridle, and though it was unwise of him to let that reaction show, he not only couldn’t avoid it but didn’t care to. He did press his lips till the urge to retort viciously had passed, but other than that he let his dislike show plainly.

“I’m not trying to insult you. I’m merely pointing out that—”

“Somehow you think you and I have something in common?” José asked.

After a moment, Inzaghi reached behind himself to drop the paper on the desk. “I did think you were a little more perceptive than that. I’m not interested in you. I’m interested in what you can do. So are Lampard and Terry, and the Count of Porto, but I think you understand they’re interested in what you can do for them.”

“And isn’t that the situation of a good servant?”

Inzaghi’s pale, thin lips, so colorless they seemed to blend into the whiteness of his teeth, curved into a thoughtful smile. “I do not,” he said with great deliberation, “Think you are _my_ servant. And I also don’t care to guess who your real master is—I think you know well enough who it is, and that’s sufficient. It’s more troublesome when men believe they’re answerable to no one, as that’s never the case.”

“I’d like to think you’re speaking as a faithful Christian would,” José replied after a moment. He settled back against the doorway, not so much mollified as comprehending better. Which was worth more than mere satisfaction, after all. “But you’re an Italian, and if there was ever a more faithless people…never mind that. It’s all business, anyway.”

“And mine is with ensuring that Milan doesn’t fall to outsiders. We have faith. We just don’t bestow it blindly, on anything that catches our eye.” Eyebrows raised, Inzaghi gave José a moment to make a stupid comment on that. When José didn’t, he looked faintly approving before he returned to the main discussion. “Do I really need to explain my interest any further?”

“In me? No.” José shrugged and let the honest truth stand for itself. “In the others? Not really—you just want one of them to take France off your mind for a while. But in what I have to do with them…ah, that I don’t quite understand.”

“The Spanish marriage is going ahead. If the Count’s asked you to help with that, then you should know that, at least, is nothing you can do anything about. It’s nothing I can do anything about either, for that matter.” It probably wasn’t, but Inzaghi was doing his best to seem friendly. He pushed himself off the desk and came forward a few steps, his hands coming up to accent his words with gestures—and his next few words were in Italian, not the English they’d been using. “If your king could have seen past his son’s death, he would’ve understood that this is actually in his interest. France has the wealth to challenge anyone at sea, but prefers land—and should continue to have to concern herself with land, if the Catholic kings and Henry both attack her. And it will distract Spain from the sea as well.”

“I can’t speak for my king,” José finally said. He clipped his words very shortly.

Inzaghi nodded in a sympathetic manner, then let his head tip to the side. “Well, of course not, but you can speak for yourself. And you do speak for yourself—you have a history of doing so.”

“I speak up when it seems appropriate to. I’m no novice or idealist, thinking my ideas alone are going to carry me through life.” Then José frowned, rethinking the last few exchanges of their conversation. “And I don’t presume to think I know my king’s mind.”

“No.” One thin shoulder moved as Inzaghi came a little closer, his eyes coolly surveying José’s face. “The thoughts of the dead are, of course, known only to God.”

José was already looking at the other man, but he looked even harder then, till the edges of Inzaghi’s face began to blur before him. He blinked and their sharpness was restored. And so was the sharpness of his mind; the living were frequently more changeable than the sea itself, but the dead were…they were unavoidable, and so he always dealt with them head-on.

At least he should have, but he’d been slipping for a while. He could admit that now—he had to, with this new death and the new world it created thrust so roughly upon him. It wasn’t anything he could do something about, and likewise, that other—Deco’s death hadn’t been something he could do anything about. Deco had come of his own free will, and he’d died due to his choices, and if José still felt that he’d failed somewhere along the line, it didn’t change the death. He could and did fail, and he hated it every time, but he couldn’t make the failure not exist after the fact. That was the worst part. He’d failed.

“It’s nothing to do with us. We’d be happier if there was competition to drive down the spice prices, and furthermore the Duke of Milan isn’t inclined to meddle so lightly in international politics. If you want to know who was responsible, you should look towards—”

“So my king’s dead, and the Count of Porto can go home safely since the new king won’t have such an undying hatred of the Spanish, and so Henry can marry his son to a Spanish princess with only the French protesting. That settles them. So what about me?” José asked. His voice was harsh, and he knew that it was reflecting emotions better kept away from Inzaghi’s sharp eyes, but he was failing at retaining his calm as well. And he couldn’t much care about it; if Inzaghi was perceptive enough to interpret José’s reactions, then he deserved to, and if not, then he could misconstrue it however he pleased. His opinion didn’t matter to José.

After a long, contemplative moment, Inzaghi tipped his head forward and raised his hands to press their fingertips against his temples. Then he began to rub at them, and José understood he was frustrated—it was such an ordinary reaction that it seemed out of keeping with the other man. “I see I did misjudge you on a few points. I was under the impression that you weren’t so circumspect in respecting kings and lords when it came to pursuing your goals.”

“I’ve only ever pursed goals in the service of my country,” José said.

“So you’d say you went to India solely because Portugal asked you to?” Inzaghi said, eyebrows raised. He looked up, his hands still at his temples. Their thin sides echoed the leanness of his face. “You didn’t. And I’m not speaking to you right now as the Milanese ambassador—I’m speaking as someone who knows what it is to shape your life towards one and only one desire.”

José looked at him, looked at the sudden shine in Inzaghi’s black eyes, and then rubbed at his own temple. He could hear the suppressed fervor in the other man’s voice, which of course wasn’t for him, but it did remind him of other men, in other times. Dark, uncertain times, with only that little bit of brightness ahead to which they could hold. Or, anyway, that little bit of brightness that they thought they saw. “Maybe you are. But then you’re speaking as someone who hasn’t achieved that desire, I think. I have.”

“You don’t seem like you have.” Inzaghi lowered his hands at that point. He was close enough so the air stirred by their passing brushed up against José’s clothing.

“I have, believe me. I’ve been to India.” And landed there, and known the land, and he should have known better than to think that that land was going to be any different from any other land. He knew the sea and he should have stuck to that. He shouldn’t have tried to be any different than he was, and if he had still had his losses, at least then he would have retained his respect for himself. “And it was—India. It was my goal and I got it, but what you think you are going to have at the end and what you do have aren’t the same. Is that direct enough for you?”

The other man settled slightly back on his feet, his eyes narrowing as he studied José. His hands had fallen to hang by his sides, but not naturally—nothing about the man seemed that natural. Everything was careful, was honed and poised to…to one end, and he was telling the truth as far as that was concerned. But he didn’t necessarily _know_ the truth.

“If you were disappointed, then perhaps it was the wrong place. Or perhaps it was the right place, but something else was wrong. I can’t pretend to know your mind, though of course you’re not dead.” Pause. Then Inzaghi came forward, the rugs muffling his already-soft steps into noiselessness, and put his arm past José. At the same time he turned his head and leaned in so José and he were face-to-face, close enough to look past the surface barriers of each other’s eyes. “But it seems to me that only the dead have an excuse for lingering in their disappointment. The living should look forward.”

The air behind José whispered, then pulled at his hair and clothes as the door swung open. Inzaghi looked at him a last time, thoughtful but distant, and stepped out into the hall.

After a moment, José turned around and followed the other man, who led him all the way to the front door again. There wasn’t any of the inane chatter that had accompanied them the other way, but Inzaghi seemed comfortable enough in the silence, and José had his own reasons for not disturbing it.

“I think, as someone who knows the sea, I’m a little more aware of what horizons are left to look forward to,” José remarked as Inzaghi began to open the door. He waited for the other man to pause. “The East won’t be far enough soon.”

“Why look East? For that matter, why look so far in the first place? It’s more difficult to look closely, and see what could be done with what’s around you.” Inzaghi pulled the door towards him, then stepped aside to let José pass. Though he was looking outside, at the leaden skies pouring out yet another storm. “Even in England, there’s room to improve.”

That went without saying, José almost remarked. But then he thought the better of it, and not only because the comment would have been redundant. He looked sharply at Inzaghi as he made an appropriately formal farewell, but the other man was unreadable.

* * *

“I know what he said and I’m telling you, this is too important. I need to talk to him, Rui,” José snapped.

He tried again to move past the other man, but Rui insisted on sliding from side to side to prevent José from advancing. Then he actually put his hands on José’s shoulders; José jerked back before Rui could exert any pressure, but still, the damage was done.

“I know your idea of importance has nothing to do with anything but yourself, and anyway, he can’t—” Rui started.

Then he looked up, frowning. It took a moment for José to understand the front door had just shut loudly, and moreover, that it’d been followed by Cristiano’s warning yelp. He began to roll his eyes, but then stopped himself and turned around.

Nuno Gomes paused near the head of the hall, then came storming up to them, his hair damp and disheveled and his cloak flapped askew over one shoulder. He absently pulled at that, then flung it over his arm as he stared about with wide eyes. “Henry called me in without warning—he had his own translator—the king’s dead.”

“But…he was telling you he was dead?” Rui said, blinking.

“No, João’s dead.” José snorted when both of them rounded on him, and then again as he spotted Cristiano lurking beyond Nuno’s left shoulder. “I told you I had important news. I just saw Inzaghi.”

Rui blinked again before his brows drew down into a thunderous expression. “Are you saying…”

“It doesn’t matter. The English knew before we did, maybe it was the same for him. But it doesn’t matter—Rui, we’ve got to go home. We have to get back before the new king is crowned and plead our case,” Nuno breathlessly said. He wavered for a few more seconds, then whirled and all but flew down the hall towards his chambers.

It was the most animated the man had been in months, José decided. For good reason, since Nuno was on much better terms with the heir-apparent, and now the problem of keeping his rank was reduced to simple court intrigue. He was comfortable enough with that.

Cristiano waited, for once, till Rui had hurried after Nuno to ease himself into the hall. He sauntered up and opened his mouth, then shut it with an audible click as José turned away from him. Then he made an annoyed sound to José’s back, but he hurried himself to keep up as José strode towards the door. “Are we going back to Portugal? But what about—what about the Spanish marriage, and the Englishmen—”

The door was still standing open, but Lampard’s tall, broad-shouldered figure was crowding out the view of the courtyard. He was bare-headed and the water ran in thick rivulets down his neck and arms to pool about his feet. When he saw José, his eyes widened and he took an incautious step forward before remembering where they were.

“I…escorted your Count back, and heard the news. My condolences,” he said, his hands awkwardly trying to place themselves on his thighs, his waist, the back of his neck. He couldn’t hide his own disappointment. “I suppose you’re leaving immediately, then?”

“The Count is.” José moved to the side so Lampard wasn’t in shadow. Which suited the Englishman better, with his clear, hopelessly honest eyes and his bluff airs. And his dreams of the sea, so childlike and yet with that hint of determination to steel them against the winds. “But…I think I better serve him by staying here.” He watched Lampard’s face suddenly lighten. “I’m not on good terms with the Portuguese king’s heir, and I wouldn’t like for that to threaten the Count’s place in the early days of a new reign, when everything’s uncertain.”

The light died a little, but in its place came a contemplative look. Shrewd, but without the cold calculation that marked men like Inzaghi—it had too much hope for that. “Oh. Well, I’d be happy to suggest alternative arrangements for the Count’s journey back. And—and I’ll do my best to make your sacrifice worth it. I know—”

“I know what I’m giving up. I’ve given up things before.” After another moment’s thought, José settled on the words. “I had a friend once, very like your friend John. He helped me in everything—in getting to India. I couldn’t have done it without him. And he died there.”

And he’d come back from India, and now he was in England, staring at this earnest Englishman who was blinking as if his eyes were stinging. Then Lampard shook himself. “I’m sorry. But I swear on my honor, if you stay in England, I’ll do everything I can for you. John and I, we’ll try and see if we can be your friends here.”

He put out his hand, and José took it. They shook on it, and then José loosened his fingers but kept his arm still to see. And what he saw was Lampard’s bright eyes staring at him, and what he felt was Lampard’s fingers sliding a fraction too slow from his, their roughened tips scraping over the back of his hand.

Someone called from outside. Lampard started, then looked over his shoulder. Then he grimaced. “I’m sorry, but I have to—well, I’ve got to start arranging things.”

“By all means,” José said, stepping back.

He watched the man leave, and then he watched the rain falling. His ears picked up the sound of hesitant footsteps, but he didn’t turn around till Cristiano was next to him. The other man was biting his lip and rubbing the thumb of one hand over the knuckles of the other, staring out the doorway.

“Nuno’s going to take a lot of convincing,” Cristiano said. His lips twitched. “And I don’t think he or Rui like me _that_ much.”

“Given Nuno’s delicate stomach, I don’t think he’ll stay angry at the captain keeping his ship from floundering,” José remarked. He did smile at Cristiano’s sharp look at him, but he kept his lips shut as it wasn’t completely about amusement.

A man and a woman walked down the street past the front gate, laughing together. Cristiano pushed out his lower lip at them, then snorted and made his eyes into slits. “Good for him, but what about me?” He flicked another look at José. “You’re not offering me the ship because you think I deserve it—and even if I took the offer, you’d strip away all the good men and the useful parts. I know _some_ of how you work. And I’m not leaving till I know all of it.”

“You’re a spoiled little boy.” Though to be honest, José wasn’t entirely displeased.

“I’m not a _boy_ ,” Cristiano said hotly. Then he abruptly broke into a laugh, his white teeth flashing. “God, I really wonder if you’re worth it sometimes.”

He rocked back and forth on his feet a few times, still shaking his head and chuckling. But the droning of the rain quickly muffled that sound, and eventually it seemed to reach out to muffle his good humor as well. His mouth turned back into a thin lip, and when he looked at José, his eyes were sober almost to the point of sadness.

“They’re not Deco either.” Cristiano paused, then lifted his chin. “I don’t even think they’re worth him, both of them put together.”

“No, they’re not. They’re different. It’s time to do something different.” And anyway, José wasn’t doing this for the Englishmen, or even for England.

Or for Portugal, though he fully intended to ensure he could return to his homeland when he pleased; Lampard had been correct in saying that knowledge couldn’t be owned, but he’d not gone the step further to fully realize what buying and selling it meant, and so the pivotal role was always going to go to the one who could control that business. And it was time, José thought, that the kings and lords learned what every good tradesman knew—time enough that the traders rose to their full worth and remade an unfair world. Inzaghi had guessed closer there, but he still paid dues to his Duke and he couldn’t possibly see what José saw in this rainy, miserable little island with its far-dreaming people. He couldn’t see that India, the East, all of that was just shortsightedness and the real achievement was to be the one always launching the next ship, sending out the newest explorer. The dead could lie where they fell, but the living would go on.

“It doesn’t seem that different. It’s the same risks as before, except we don’t even know where these Englishmen really want to go,” Cristiano snorted. “So all right, maybe it’s just more dangerous, and if we make the same mistakes this time, that’s it.” 

“What, you’re scared now?” José smiled at Cristiano’s vigorous head-shake, dry and cool in his amusement. He opened his mouth, but then changed his mind and instead turned away, back towards the Count whom he currently still had to respect. If Cristiano was ever going to amount to anything, he’d figure it out for himself. “I, at least, don’t intend to make the same mistakes twice, Cristiano. I learn. I always learn.”

* * *

_Several Months Later_

“So Mourinho’s building up the English navy?” Nesta cast a disinterested look over the papers Filippo had just laid upon the table. He drummed his fingers, then hitched himself forward in his seat and moved one paper aside so he could look at the map beneath it. That, he gave his undivided attention, his brows knitting over the bridge of his nose and not unknitting even when Paolo rose from his chair.

Paolo didn’t betray a hint of irritation at the other man, but instead leaned forward and looked directly into Filippo’s eyes, giving the impression that his entire attention was focused there. “He’s committed there for certain? Has the new—”

“Henry sent the Count of Porto home with a letter that made it expressly clear he’s pleased to have the man in his dockyards. I understand the new Portuguese king isn’t happy, but Mourinho wasn’t privy to the royal archives, so the number of navigational secrets he can divulge are fairly limited.” Filippo twitched one finger towards the sheet to his left. He’d spent most of the journey back working and reworking his reports, hampered both by the miserable conditions and the need for secrecy, and so he was glad when Paolo picked up the paper and actually seemed to read it. Though of course he kept his face blank. “His talent never lay in that area, anyway. Deco was his navigator, and as far as I understand, he’s not found another one to match that man.”

The sheet inched itself up through Paolo’s fingers as he read, gradually covering his face till only his eyes were visible. Beside him, Nesta moved again, wincing and moving his bandaged shoulder. He was still looking at the map.

“On the other hand, Mourinho is very skilled in adapting ships, and in taking sailing risks that other captains—”

Filippo put down his hand, overlapping the two remaining sheets with his thumb and little finger as they flapped wildly. He braced himself just in time for the second slam, which shut the door behind him, and then quietly slid out of the way as footsteps thudded up behind him.

“I know, I’m late. Sometimes I am,” Zlatan said. He arrived at Filippo’s left and propped his hip up against the table, then leaned across to tap two fingers under Nesta’s chin just as the other man was opening his mouth. Then he looked at Paolo, ignoring both Nesta’s outraged, belated slap and Filippo’s interest. “So?”

“The English are employing your old friend José Mourinho to overhaul their navy,” Paolo said in measured tones. He finished reading before he handed the sheet back to Filippo and looked up at Zlatan, as calm as any other time.

Zlatan’s face arranged itself into a remarkably complex expression of distaste, amusement and muted surprise. He rolled his eyes and his hips as he got off the table, then walked around that to peer over Nesta’s shoulder. Mouth tightly shut, Nesta spared him a short glower before tilting the map away from Zlatan—whereupon Zlatan promptly bent lower, till his nose was nearly buried in Nesta’s ear. “Mourinho’s not my friend. He’s a bastard who thinks the Venetians are awful just because they calculate how much a man’s worth and not how much a man can work before he’s dead, like he does. But England? Better than France.”

“Obviously. If he were building the French navy, we’d have to worry about too many damn prongs of attack, and depend on Genoa and Naples to be sensible into the bargain,” Nesta muttered. He twisted and turned, and when he finally understood that Zlatan would move with him whatever he did, he slapped down the map and began to stand.

He was only a third of the way up when he abruptly stopped, his face whitening and a low curt hiss issuing from his thinned lips. His free hand went towards his bandaged shoulder.

Paolo immediately looked up, and his hand also rose, but by then Zlatan had already slipped behind Nesta to put a hand under Nesta’s arm. Nesta stiffened, his hand going still in the air, and Zlatan smoothly moved to duck beneath it and then come up so Nesta’s arm was slung over his own shoulder. Then he twitched the map from the other man and picked it up, giving it an exaggerated shake to flatten the creases. After another moment, Nesta allowed it with only a grumble about Zlatan’s holding it the wrong way.

“Well, Mourinho does keep his word, even if he takes everything you have for it. So I’m glad he’s in England,” Zlatan said. “Otherwise I’d have to kill him.”

The corners of Paolo’s lips quirked, but his eyes as he looked at the other two men were somber enough. He put his hand down, then moved it towards him and flattened it against the table as he continued to rise. “So the Spanish marriage is going through, and England and Spain will be united against France. That buys us some time…no, let me read through these so you don’t have to explain twi—”

Just before Paolo fully straightened, Zlatan swung about and pressed his lips to Paolo’s temple. And glanced at Filippo while doing so, daring him to comment, before settling back to take Nesta’s hard elbow into his side.

Paolo himself briefly dropped his eyes, then gave himself a minute shake. When he looked at Filippo again, he was as composed as ever. “—twice. You’ve had a long journey back, Pippo. Go get a good night’s rest before I quiz you to death.”

Filippo protested, but half-heartedly. Partly because he was so exhausted he couldn’t muster the proper effort, but partly for reasons that didn’t include for mere form’s sake. But Paolo was gently, firmly insistent, and so somehow Filippo found himself at the door. A servant immediately materialized in the hall, talking soothingly to him about a bath and a hot meal and a featherbed, but Filippo did manage to twist about for a last look.

The door was closing, but through that rapidly-narrowing sliver, he saw Nesta’s bent head, and Paolo’s back walking towards it. And Zlatan’s eyes, cool and thoughtful, watching him back.

Then he let the servant lead him away; he had plenty of other things to keep him too preoccupied to notice where he was going. Thinking that it wasn’t surprising Zlatan and José Mourinho had met wasn’t supposed to be one of them, but Filippo was a little tired to concentrate properly. And it was interesting. And, to be honest, it was amusing as well. He hadn’t had a chance to ask, but he thought it likely that Mourinho hadn’t liked Zlatan either, with the way the both of them were so suspicious of entirely the wrong things and people.

“Here we are,” the servant murmured, bowing as he opened the door to Filippo’s room.

Filippo stepped over the threshold, then looked about the room. It wasn’t as he’d left it, of course, since that had been months ago and Adriana was as scrupulous as Paolo in observing the spirit of hospitality. So instead it was better, and welcoming, and above all, it was familiar. England had always been alien to him, but this was home. This was Milan.

**Author's Note:**

> See the Introduction for a list of historical resources.


End file.
